The use of a visual mask may seriously confound your experiment

Eriksen, Charles W.

doi:10.3758/bf03204322

Cited by 115 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In studies that use masking to explore other phenomena, the masks are usually assumed to have a simple effect on the target (e.g., to weaken some internal representation). Here, we have shown that simultaneous and temporal masks can interact, which indicates that masking needs to be applied with great care, as noted by Eriksen (1980), "the use of a visual mask may seriously confound your experiment. "…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Combining simultaneous with temporal masking.

Hermens¹,

Herzog²,

Francis³

2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Simultaneous and temporal masking are two frequently used techniques in psychology and vision science. While there are many studies and theories related to each masking technique, there are no systematic investigations of their mutual relationship, even though both techniques are often applied together. Here, we show that temporal masking can both undo and enhance the deteriorating effects of simultaneous masking depending on the stimulus onset asynchrony between the simultaneous and temporal mask. For the task and stimuli used in this study, temporal masking was largely unaffected by the properties of the simultaneous mask. In contrast, simultaneous masking seems to depend strongly on spatial grouping and was strongly affected by the properties of the temporal mask. These findings help to identify the nature of both temporal and simultaneous masking and promote understanding of the role of spatial and temporal grouping in visual perception.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Combining simultaneous with temporal masking.

Hermens¹,

Herzog²,

Francis³

2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The mask was much brighter than the targets: When the mask was superimposed over a target picture that was displayed at maximum luminance, the target could not be seen at all. This target-mask luminance configuration, which was used in Experiments 1-4, satisfies the "minimum control" suggested by Eriksen (1980) for experiments in which a mask is used to control perceptual processing time. All relevant stimulus luminances used in Experiments 1-3 and 5 are shown in Table 1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Picture perception: Effects of luminance on available information and information-extraction rate.

Loftus¹

1985

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYIn each of four experiments, complex visual stimuli--pictures and digit arrays--were remembered better when shown at high luminance than when shown at low luminance. Why does this occur? Two possibilities were considered: first that lowering luminance reduces the amount of available information in the stimulus, and second that lowering luminance reduces the rate at which the information is extracted from the stimulus. Evidence was found for both possibilities. When stimuli were presented at durations short enough to permit only a single eye fixation, luminance affected only the rate at which information is extracted: decreasing luminance by a factor of 100 caused information to be extracted more slowly by a factor that ranged, over experiments, from 1.4 to 2.0. When pictures were presented at durations long enough to permit multiple fixations, however, luminance affected the total amount of extractable information. In a fifth experiment, converging evidence was sought for the proposition that within the first eye fixation on a picture, luminance affects the rate of information extraction. If this proposition is correct and, in addition, the first eye fixation lasts until some criterion amount of information is extracted, then fixation duration should increase with decreasing luminance. This prediction was confirmed.

show abstract

“…Finally, pre-and postmasks were not used, since there is nothing apparent in the formulation of the feature-specific model that would restrict the operation of the hypothesized processes only to situations in which masking is present. On the contrary, the use of visual masks can introduce serious confounding that complicates interpretation of results (Eriksen, 1980).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We considered it important to assess what effect pre-and postmasking stimuli were contributing to the experimental effects. Eriksen (1980) has pointed out some of the methodological problems that are involved in using visual masks, particularly when the experi~ent involves the differential stimulation of hypothesized feature detectors. The features contained in the mask have an unspecified overlap with the features in the experimental displays.…”

Section: Experiments 1 Andmentioning

confidence: 99%