Séminaire LINP2: Nicolas Poirel

Nicolas Poirel
Université Paris Cité, UMR CNRS 8240 LaPsyDÉ.

Do we first perceive the tree or the forest? This real-world situation consists of local elements (i.e., the trees) that are coherently arranged into a global configuration (i.e., the forest). Considerable effort has been devoted to discovering whether the global or the local level is perceived first, by both adults and children. Thanks to compound stimuli, consisted of large global forms composed of small local elements (e.g., a global triangle composed of local circles), we will show that even if objectively presented with similar visual stimuli, children younger than 6 years of age exhibit a strong attraction to local information, whereas children older than 6 years of age exhibit, similar to adults, a visual attention bias toward global information. During this seminar, I will present both behavioral and brain imaging data underlying the global/local evolution with age. Moreover, results from paradigm studying the impact of emotional context on global/local processes will be considered, and we will also show that prematurity or pathology such as Schizophrenia could strongly modulate how global and local visual processes are considered by participants.