Abstract
This paper experimentally concerns the problem of whether a figure is represented in the human visual system by a gathering of its local features or by a global feature. When a figure is observed through a restricted small visual field, the representation of the figure is considered to be a chain composed of its local features. If the visual field becomes larger, the image of the figure changes; this means that the representation of the figure is changed by the change of the visual field size. An assumption was made that the local features in the chain did not change during the above process. Some other factors in the chain were assumd to have been changed under the influence of the visual field size. Two factors were proposed which seemed to satisfy the above assumption: One was the accuracy of the information which described the spatial relationship among local features, and the other was the amount of information stored in the short-term memory. The experiment, however, which examined whether these factors actually caused differences in the image showed that the assumption was invalid. This result suggests that a figure is represented by a global feature in our visual system.
