Evidence for a global–local system: Priming global versus local processing can transfer across tasks and sensory modalities.

Our findings indicate that priming for global (whole-focused) versus local (detail-focused) visual processing has a broad effect on how people process information in tasks involving visual and auditory stimuli. This demonstrates that global (whole-focused) and local (detail-focused) modes of attention are flexible cognitive states that can transfer between domains. These results highlight the importance of hierarchical processing as a general principle of human perception and cognition, helping us understand how attention shifts between broad patterns and fine details in everyday activities.