Supposing that crowding is compulsory grouping suggests a remarkably simple model for object recognition

Perceptual integration and attention in human extrastriate cortex

“…In the last decade, many psychophysical studies have converged on the finding that simple models of crowding cannot fully explain the phenomenon 18 , 51 – 53 . To explain the complex interaction between target and flankers, these studies have suggested that crowding and grouping rely on the same integration mechanism 21 , 52 , 54 .…”

“…Crowding is a well-defined psychophysical phenomenon that limits object recognition across the visual field. Behaviorally, it results in impaired recognition when the task is target identification, while enhanced performance is observed when observers are required to judge a texture 11 , 21 . This indicates that crowding reveals the core features of vision.…”

“…If the smallest available integration field is too large to isolate the target, crowding occurs. Using a large tile, when a finer size is available, produces grouping 9 , 11 , 20 , 21 . Based on psychophysics, recent attempts have been made to isolate the involvement of different brain regions in crowding 22 – 28 .…”

Empirical Evidence for Intraspecific Multiple Realization?

“…Others have pointed to V3 (Tyler and Likova, 2007;Bi et al, 2009), V4 (Motter, 2006), or higher visual areas (Chung et al, 2007;. Although the existence of a "crowding area" is still debated, the modulation of the neural activity from early to higher visual areas, like the visual word form area (VWFA), is consistent with the increase in the receptive field size Pelli and Rosen, 2015;Strappini et al, 2017a) and with the occurrence of visual crowding at multiple levels in the visual hierarchy (Whitney and Levi, 2011).…”

“…We are constantly surrounded by complex and cluttered scenes, and recognition requires a certain range of critical spacing between two objects ( Manassi and Whitney, 2018 ). Visual crowding has a large critical-spacing range in the periphery and a small one in the fovea, measurable only when the objects are close to acuity ( Flom et al, 1963b ; Pelli and Rosen, 2015 ; Coates et al, 2018 ). So, the third clause is about the critical spacing needed to recognize the target in the fovea when presented in clutter, and it poses an important constraint for defining the cases that will be presented.…”