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Abstract
Global precedence (GP) occurs when individuals exhibit the tendency to notice global, or holistic, information before they notice local, or component, parts of a visual stimulus. Factors such as meaningfulness of components are held constant when measuring GP; however, varying such factors informs us about the underlying mechanisms of GP. In addition, investigating these effects developmentally has increased the understanding of global-local processing. This experiment examines the effect of meaningfulness (letters vs. nonletters) on adults' (n = 24) and 5-year-old children's (n = 23) GP. Adults and children were more accurate if there was one nonletter component, and children were more accurate when the target was located at the local level. However, adults and children were faster if both levels were letters. The developmental path of low-level sensory factors may differ from that of high-level cognitive factors in visual processing, and a general mechanism may account for this.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Robert Haaf for his initial contribution to the project, Marilee Martens for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, and the parents, children, and research assistants who made this research possible.
Portions of this research were presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association Conference (May 2003, 2006).