Figural goodness effects in perception and memory

There is an apparent contradiction concerning configurational effects in visual information processing. Some studies have shown that when an array is organized into a “good” or unitary Gestalt, analysis of a single part of it is facilitated, while others have shown “good” arrays to impede search for a part. The three experiments reported here support the proposition that goodness of form can facilitate performance when memory is used, but that goodness impairs strictly perceptual search for a part of an array. These experiments compare detection of a single feature in faces (unitary figures) and nonfaces. They show that when the face or nonface is presented before the target feature (and must be held in memory), performance is better for faces than for nonfaces. When the target is presented before the face or nonface and perceptual search is required, faces give worse performance than nonfaces. Implications for perceptual phenomena, including the object-superiority and word-superiority effects, are discussed.