Figure 9. The impossible figure (right) is not noticeable as such at first glance-Gestalt Processing in Human-Robot Interaction: A Novel Account for Autism Research

<p>In the lexical domain a similar effect of holistic word processing is described in (Anstis,<br> 2005b). The viewers were presented with pairs of three-letter words in quick succession and asked<br> to report if the upper halves of the successively presented words were identical. Surprisingly, even<br> when the upper halves of the words were orthographically identical, the error rate was reliably<br> higher than expected and in comparison with matching identical successive words. As the author of<br> the study Stuart Anstis points out: &ldquo;students were processing the words not as separable parts, but<br> holistically as perceptual units that could not be perceptually split apart. These results show that in<br> normal circumstances, the visual system cannot, or does not, divide words into upper and lower<br> halves&rdquo; (Anstis, 2005b, p. 239).The author relates the results of his study to studies of visual<br> perception of faces as evidence that the mechanism of holistic processing in the visual and the<br> lexical domains is essentially the same.</p>