Global and local processing in vision: Perspectives from comparative cognition

Abstract

Primates and birds are visually dominant species. Recent comparative studies in visual perception address questions about the differences between humans and nonhuman primates, as well as primates and birds. This paper discusses the relative importance of global and local visual processing in primates and birds. Although most nonhuman animals, unlike humans, show a local advantage when processing hierarchical compounding stimuli, studies using other types of stimuli revealed that primate vision may process global information prior to local information. In contrast, the importance of global processing for birds is restricted for ecologically important stimuli such as conspecific images. Both global and local precedence in vision are the result of animals'equally successful adaptations to their living environments, implying that global-oriented human vision is not the only best system.