Who sees trees before forest? The obsessive-compulsive style of visual attention

Psychol Sci. 2005 Feb;16(2):123-9. doi: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00792.x.

Abstract

It has been suggested that individuals with obsessive-compulsive personalities tend to focus on small local details in their surroundings, whereas histrionic individuals are characterized by more global information processing. Using the global-local hierarchical-letters paradigm, we were able to provide support for the first but not the second hypothesis. Measures related to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder were associated with excessive visual attention to small details of the hierarchical letters. Specifically, the obsessive-compulsive cognitive style was associated with local interference, which reflects the effects of distraction by to-be-ignored small details on identification of global information.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Attention*
  • Compulsive Personality Disorder / psychology*
  • Concept Formation
  • Discrimination Learning
  • Female
  • Field Dependence-Independence*
  • Histrionic Personality Disorder / psychology
  • Humans
  • Internal-External Control
  • Male
  • Orientation
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual*
  • Personality Inventory
  • Reaction Time
  • Size Perception*
  • Statistics as Topic
  • Students / psychology