On the nature and order of organizational processing: A reply to Peterson

Several points in the original article by Palmer and Rock (1994) are clarified in light of Peterson’s (1994) commentary. First, we address several issues related to the nature and order of organizational processes in our theory. We argue that many of her objections result from misconceptions about our theory. We attempt to clarify the relevant issues, including the fact that we intended the theory to describe an ordering of processes in cascade rather than as a sequence of classical discrete stages. Second, we discuss Peterson’s objections to our discussion of her findings on the relation between figure-ground processing and object recognition. We argue against her “prefigural recognition” proposal on logical grounds and provide an alternative account of her findings in terms of our theory.