title: Lost in the forest, stuck in the trees: dispositional global/local bias is resistant to exposure to high and low spatial frequencies.
abstract: Visual stimuli can be perceived at a broad, "global" level, or at a more focused, "local" level. While research has shown that many individuals demonstrate a preference for global information, there are large individual differences in the degree of global/local bias, such that some individuals show a large global bias, some show a large local bias, and others show no bias. The main purpose of the current study was to examine whether these dispositional differences in global/local bias could be altered through various manipulations of high/low spatial frequency. Through 5 experiments, we examined various measures of dispositional global/local bias and whether performance on these measures could be altered by manipulating previous exposure to high or low spatial frequency information (with high/low spatial frequency faces, gratings, and Navon letters). Ultimately, there was little evidence of change from pre-to-post manipulation on the dispositional measures, and dispositional global/local bias was highly reliable pre- to post-manipulation. The results provide evidence that individual differences in global/local bias or preference are relatively resistant to exposure to spatial frequency information, and suggest that the processing mechanisms underlying high/low spatial frequency use and global/local bias may be more independent than previously thought.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brock University, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dale
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brock University, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Karen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Arnell
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*