with phonemes. This suggests a dissociation between subjects with dyslexia and dyscalculia. These developmental learning disabilities do not cause general problems with identifying symbols to their mental representations, but rather create specific challenges. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) subjects are prone to be distracted by the local aspects of stimuli when asked to identify global aspects of figures such as the Navon figure. This is likely because individuals with OCPD characteristically have sharp, detail-oriented attentions, and tend to focus more on specifics rather than the larger context. Autism There are correlations between global or local performance on a task and the abilities to identify emotion and canine age for autistic children. In both cases, global responses correlate to better identification. In general, autistic children demonstrate much weaker global precedence than those without the disorder. Within the group of autistic children, those who respond more globally to a discrimination task perform better on emotion and canine age tasks. One explanation is a possible biological dysfunction in the brain region where facial processing occurs. Research indicates that global processing, facial recognition, and emotional expression recognition are all linked to the right hemisphere. A defect in that area would explain the characteristics of autism. For further information on facial recognition and processing in individuals with autism see the autism and facial recognition section of face perception. References Cognition