Psychological bulletin
-
Psychological bulletin · Jul 1992
ReviewPrimacy of wholistic processing and global/local paradigm: a critical review.
The question of whether perception is analytic or wholistic is an enduring issue in psychology. The global-precedence hypothesis, considered by many as a modern version of the Gestaltist claim about the perceptual primacy of wholes, has generated a large body of research, but the debate still remains very active. This article reviews the research within the global/local paradigm, and critically analyzes the assumptions underlying this paradigm. ⋯ It is concluded that one should be very cautious in making inferences about wholistic processing from the processing advantage of the global level of stimulus structure. A distinction is proposed between global properties, defined by their position in the hierarchical structure of the stimulus, and wholistic properties, defined as a function of interrelations among component parts. It is suggested that a direct comparison between processing of wholistic and component properties is needed to support the hypothesis about the perceptual primacy of wholistic processing.