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It has been shown that there is a transition from a global to a local advantage in reaction time as visual angle increases (Kinchla & Wolfe, 1979), and it has been assumed that this transition reflects lower level (e.g., retinal) processes. In three experiments, we examined whether higher level (e.g., attentional) processes play a role in this transition. In each experiment, subjects received a different stimulus set in each of two blocks of trials. In Experiment 1, stimuli subtending 1.5°, 3°, 4.5°, or 6° of visual angle vertically (small-stimuli set) were randomly presented in one block, while the other block consisted of random presentations of 3°, 6°, 9°, or 12° stimuli (large-stimuli set), The subjects’ task was to identify targets that appeared randomly at either the local or the global level. It was found that the transition from a global to a local reaction-time advantage took place at a larger visual angle for the large-stimuli set …