A Navon figure is made of a larger recognisable shape, such as a letter, composed of copies of a smaller different shape. Navon figures are used in tests of visual neglect.. David Navon's research demonstrated that global features are perceived more quickly than local features. Jules Davidoff also performed research, but in a remote culture, finding opposite results; the participants more readily identified the local features. Patients with Simultanagnosia

Simultanagnosia

Simultanagnosia is a rare neurological disorder characterized by the inability of an individual to perceive more than a single object at a time. It is one of three major components of Bálint’s syndrome, an uncommon and incompletely understood variety of severe neuropsychological impairments...

have difficulty identifying global features, and when presented with a Navon figure will identify only the local features. In a recent study comparing global-local processing in different races , it was found that East Asians demonstrated significantly stronger global processing than Caucasians, implying that in terms of research on visual attention, race should be acknowledged in order to come to valid theoretical conclusions.

Example

A letter T (global)composed of letter S

 SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 SS        SSSSS        SS

           SSSSS

           SSSSS

           SSSSS

           SSSSS

           SSSSS

           SSSSS

          SSSSSSS

       SSSSSSSSSSSSS