Soliūnas Alvydas, Gurciniene Ona, Alaburda Aidas, Ruksenas Osvaldas
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Vilnius University, M.K. Ciurlionio 21/27, 03101, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Cogn Process. 2006 Sep;7(3):195-202. doi: 10.1007/s10339-006-0149-4. Epub 2006 Aug 4.
The role of parts versus that of wholes in a visual perception has been debated for a century as two opposite approaches, namely, an analytic and holistic. In two psychophysical experiments we investigated whether the stimulus completeness or distinctiveness is essential for identification of the partially presented patterns under brief presentation conditions. For this purpose, a special class of stimuli was constructed in such a way that the patterns could be divided into informative and redundant parts. The first experiment clearly demonstrated the importance of the redundant part for effective pattern identification for the majority of subjects. The second experiment revealed the direct dependence of identification accuracy of the patterns on their completeness (2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 elements). Familiarisation of subjects with the test stimuli influenced the strength of this dependence.
