Redundancy masking and the identity crowding debate

Taylor, Henry; Sayim, Bilge

doi:10.1002/tht3.469

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…However, observers rarely depicted any of the letters of the target set or distorted versions of them when shown letter-like stimuli (4% of responses to the letter-like trials), and never any other letter (as shown by visual inspection). Interestingly, although most omission errors occurred for identical lines, we did not find any evidence for redundancy masking (Sayim & Taylor, 2019;Taylor & Sayim, 2020;Yildirim et al, 2020;Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2021) for the letter-like E target (i.e., reporting two instead of three horizontal lines). Because participants were presented with on average nine letters before the letter-like E, and the letter or letter-like F preceded the letter-like E for seven out of ten participants, expectation of a letter and implicit or explicit comparisons with the relatively easy F-target could underlie the absence of redundancy masking (see also Yildirim et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 74%

“…For example, in the letter-like A target, observers missed at least one of the two vertical lines in 80% of the trials (60% one line, 20% both lines). The strong dependence of errors on the target type and spatial relations between lines, as well as the near absence of errors for simple targets (e.g., targets consisting of only two lines) suggest that the observed errors were due to crowding between the target parts ("self-crowding"; Martelli, Majaj, & Pelli, 2005;Zhang, Zhang, Xue, Liu, & Yu, 2009), or redundancy masking, the reduction of the perceived number of repeated elements (Sayim & Taylor, 2019;Taylor & Sayim, 2020;Yildirim et al, 2020; see also Taylor & Sayim, 2018), when the target lines were highly similar.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Geometrically restricted image descriptors: A method to capture the appearance of shape

2021

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Shape perception varies depending on many factors. For example, presenting a stimulus in the periphery often yields a different appearance compared with its foveal presentation. However, how exactly shape appearance is altered under different conditions remains elusive. One reason for this is that studies typically measure identification performance, leaving details about target appearance unknown. The lack of appearance-based methods and general challenges to quantify appearance complicate the investigation of shape appearance. Here, we introduce Geometrically Restricted Image Descriptors (GRIDs), a method to investigate the appearance of shapes. Stimuli in the GRID paradigm are shapes consisting of distinct line elements placed on a grid by connecting grid nodes. Each line is treated as a discrete target. Observers are asked to capture target appearance by placing lines on a freely viewed response grid. We used GRIDs to investigate the appearance of letters and letter-like shapes. Targets were presented at 10°eccentricity in the right visual field. Gaze-contingent stimulus presentation was used to prevent eye movements to the target. The data were analyzed by quantifying the differences between targets and response in regard to overall accuracy, element discriminability, and several distinct error types. Our results show how shape appearance can be captured by GRIDs, and how a fine-grained analysis of stimulus parts provides quantifications of appearance typically not available in standard measures of performance. We propose that GRIDs are an effective tool to investigate the appearance of shapes.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geometrically restricted image descriptors: A method to capture the appearance of shape

2021

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“…In redundancy masking (RM), the perceived number of identical items is reduced ( Sayim & Taylor, 2019 ; Taylor & Sayim, 2018 ; Taylor & Sayim, 2020 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2020 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2021 ). For example, when presented with three identical, nearby letters in the visual periphery, observers frequently reported only two letters in a free naming and drawing task ( Sayim & Taylor, 2019 ) ( Figure 1 a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atypical visual field asymmetries in redundancy masking

2022

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Redundancy masking is the reduction of the perceived number of items in repeating patterns. It shares a number of characteristics with crowding, the impairment of target identification in visual clutter. Crowding strongly depends on the location of the target in the visual field. For example, it is stronger in the upper compared to the lower visual field and is usually weakest on the horizontal meridian. This pattern of visual field asymmetries is common in spatial vision, as revealed by tasks measuring, for example, spatial resolution and contrast sensitivity. Here, to characterize redundancy masking and reveal its similarities to and differences from other spatial tasks, we investigated whether redundancy masking shows the same typical visual field asymmetries. Observers were presented with three to six radially arranged lines at 10° eccentricity at one of eight locations around fixation and were asked to report the number of lines. We found asymmetries that differed pronouncedly from those found in crowding. Redundancy masking did not differ between upper and lower visual fields. Importantly, redundancy masking was stronger on the horizontal meridian than on the vertical meridian, the opposite of what is usually found in crowding. These results show that redundancy masking diverges from crowding in regard to visual field asymmetries, suggesting different underlying mechanisms of redundancy masking and crowding. We suggest that the observed atypical visual field asymmetries in redundancy masking are due to the superior extraction of regularity and a more pronounced compression of visual space on the horizontal compared to the vertical meridian.

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“…Crowding mainly manifests itself in peripheral vision (for foveal crowding, see Coates, Levi, Touch, & Sabesan, 2018 ; Malania, Herzog, & Westheimer, 2007 ; Sayim, Westheimer, & Herzog, 2008a ; Sayim et al, 2010 ; Sayim et al, 2011 ), limiting various capacities, ranging from reading ( Pelli, Tillman, Freeman, Su, Berger, & Majaj, 2007 ; Pelli & Tillman, 2008 ), to visual search ( Carrasco, Evert, Chang, & Katz, 1995 ; Reddy & VanRullen, 2007 ; Rosenholtz, Huang, Raj, Balas, & Ilie, 2012 ; Sayim, Westheimer & Herzog, 2011 ; Vlaskamp & Hooge, 2006 ), and object recognition ( Levi, 2008 ; Pelli & Tillman, 2008 ; Wallace & Tjan, 2011 ; Whitney & Levi, 2011 ). Although crowding is usually assumed not to affect target detection ( Chung, 2010 ; Levi, Hariharan, & Klein, 2002 ; Pelli, Palomares, & Majaj, 2004 ), parts of targets or even entire targets are often lost in crowded displays ( Coates, Bernard, & Chung, 2019 ; Sayim & Taylor, 2019 ; Sayim & Wagemans, 2017 ; Taylor & Sayim, 2020 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2019 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2020 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2021 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2022 ). A particularly strong loss was found in repeating patterns, for example, when observers report only two of three presented lines ( Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2020 ; Yildirim, Coates, & Sayim, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional feature interactions in visual crowding: When configural cues eliminate the polarity advantage

Rummens

Sayim

2022

Journal of Vision

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Crowding occurs when surrounding objects (flankers) impair target perception. A key property of crowding is the weaker interference when target and flankers strongly differ on a given dimension. For instance, identification of a target letter is usually superior with flankers of opposite versus the same contrast polarity as the target (the “polarity advantage”). High performance when target-flanker similarity is low has been attributed to the ungrouping of target and flankers. Here, we show that configural cues can override the usual advantage of low target-flanker similarity, and strong target-flanker grouping can reduce – instead of exacerbate – crowding. In Experiment 1 , observers were presented with line triplets in the periphery and reported the tilt (left or right) of the central line. Target and flankers had the same (uniform condition) or opposite contrast polarity (alternating condition). Flanker configurations were either upright (||), unidirectionally tilted (\\ or //), or bidirectionally tilted (\/ or /\). Upright flankers yielded stronger crowding than unidirectional flankers, and weaker crowding than bidirectional flankers. Importantly, our results revealed a clear interaction between contrast polarity and flanker configuration. Triplets with upright and bidirectional flankers, but not unidirectional flankers, showed the polarity advantage. In Experiments 2 and 3 , we showed that emergent features and redundancy masking (i.e. the reduction of the number of perceived items in repeating configurations) made it easier to discriminate between uniform triplets when flanker tilts were unidirectional (but not when bidirectional). We propose that the spatial configurations of uniform triplets with unidirectional flankers provided sufficient task-relevant information to enable a similar performance as with alternating triplets: strong-target flanker grouping alleviated crowding. We suggest that features which modulate crowding strength can interact non-additively, limiting the validity of typical crowding rules to contexts where only single, independent dimensions determine the effects of target-flanker similarity.

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Redundancy masking and the identity crowding debate

Cited by 6 publications

References 43 publications

Geometrically restricted image descriptors: A method to capture the appearance of shape

Geometrically restricted image descriptors: A method to capture the appearance of shape

Atypical visual field asymmetries in redundancy masking

Multidimensional feature interactions in visual crowding: When configural cues eliminate the polarity advantage

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