Visual masking: Mechanisms and theories.

Felsten, Gary; Wasserman, Gerald S.

doi:10.1037/0033-2909.88.2.329

Cited by 256 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…However, it should be noted that visual resu~ts similar to those seen in Figure 10 have not necessarily been interpreted as supporting interruptive mechanisms (Felsten & Wasserman, 1980). Also, integration may be affected by the difference in intensity between the target and its complement.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Temporal integration of vibrotactile patterns

Craig

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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Three experiments were conducted to measure the temporal integration of vibrotactile patterns presented to the fingertip. In Experiment 1, letters were divided in half and the time between the onsets of the first half of the letter and second half of the letter, stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), was varied. The recognizability of the letters declined as the SOA was increased from 9 to 100 msec. In Experiment 2, the time between two patterns constituting a masking stimulus was varied and the stimulus effectiveness in interfering with letter recognition was determined. The amount of masking increasedas the SOAincreasedfrom 9 to 50 msec. In Experiment 3, the SOA between a letter and its complement (the portions of the tactile array not activated by the letter) was varied. Increasing SOA from 9 to approximately 50 msec led to increasingly accurate letter recognition. The results of the three experiments suggest that the skin is capable of complete temporal integration over a time period of less than 10 msec, and that the temporal integration function becomes asymptotic in 50 to 100 msec. The results also suggest that the onset of a vibrotactile pattern is critical for generating contours. The implications of the results for modes of generating tactile patterns and for temporal masking functions are discussed.Several studies recently completed in this laboratory have employed the concept of "temporal integration" to explain results obtained in vibrotactile patternrecognition tasks (Craig, 1978(Craig, , 1980(Craig, , 1981. One study examined a number of modes of generating vibrotactile patterns, patterns created from letters of the alphabet. Pattern recognition was measured as a function of display time. For several of the modes, the elements making up the patterns were articulated both spatially and temporally. The results showed large differences among modes, with a general trend that longer display times produced better recognition; however, at the briefest display time, three of the modes showed some deviations from this trend, suggesting that the way in which the patterns were being processed was changing.The three modes were: static, in which all elements of the pattern are turned on and off simultaneously; . slit-scan, in which a portion of the pattern is exposed as though a narrow slit were being passed across the pattern; and discontinuous sequential, in which contiguous portions of the pattern are turned on and then off in sequence, as though the pattern were being drawn on the skin. In the latter two modes, patterns presented over time (and space) produced results similar to the static mode in which the elements were all present simultaneously. The similarity in the performance obtained with these modes declined as display time increased beyond the very briefest times.This research was supported by Grant NS-00783 from the National Institutes of Health. The author wishes to thank Roger Rhodes for his assistance in conducting these experiments. The author's mailing address is: Department of Psychology, Indiana...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Temporal integration of vibrotactile patterns

Craig

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Should alternative-target displays be found to be superior to identical-target displays only when a visual mask is employed, this result would probably give us more information about the nature of visual masking rather than reflect upon the validity of the featurespecific model. The mechanisms of visual masking are still controversial (Felsten & Wasserman, 1981). Thus, experiments that employ visual masks when the masking itself is not under investigation run the high risk of having the interpretation of their results critically dependent upon assumptions concerning the processes that underlie masking.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is recognition accuracy really impaired when the target is repeated in the display?

Eriksen

Morris

Yeh

et al. 1981

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Interruption masking is not the only prevailing theory that can explain why pattern masks disrupt the perception of alphabetic targets. For example, it has been known for some time that the sensory qualities of target and mask can become integrated to form a composite percept incorporating aspects of both stimulus fields (e.g., see Breitmeyer, 1984;Felsten & Wasserman, 1980;Ganz, 1975;Jordan, 1990, in press). Thus, although backward pattern masks have the potential for interrupting target processing, it is far from clear that interruption, rather than integration, plays a critical role in the WLP.…”

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confidence: 99%

Word superiority over isolated letters: The neglected case of forward masking

Jordan

Bevan

1994

Memory & Cognition

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Previous research shows that when briefly presented alphabetic stimuli are followed by pattern masks, letters in words are reported more accurately than are isolated letters (the "WordLetter Phenomenon," or WLP); however, when these masks are replaced by blank fields, the WLP disappears. These findings have led to the popular notion that the WLP reflects selective masking of ongoing stimulus processing and so critically depends on the use of poststimulus masks. Here we report three experiments which re-examine the role of masking in the WLP by contrasting the effects of postmasked displays with the effects of premasked displays in which words and isolated letters were preceded by a pattern mask and followed by a completely blank field. Despite the critical role generally assigned to poststimulus pattern masks, similar WLPs were obtained with pre-and postmasked displays. Implications for theories of word and letter recognition are discussed.By limiting the amount of time for which a word, nonword, or single letter is presented, information can be gained to determine which physical characteristics of words are encoded by the reader and over what time scale this encoding takes place. One particular finding in this area has maintained a considerable impact on contemporary views of word recognition since it was first reported more than twenty years ago. Using a two-alternative forced-choice procedure (generally known as the ReicherWheeler paradigm), a number of studies have shown that when alphabetic stimuli are followed by a pattern mask (composed of irregular arrangements of letter fragments or similar contours), letters in words are reported more accurately than are the same letters presented in isolation

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Visual masking: Mechanisms and theories.

Cited by 256 publications

References 72 publications

Temporal integration of vibrotactile patterns

Temporal integration of vibrotactile patterns

Is recognition accuracy really impaired when the target is repeated in the display?

Word superiority over isolated letters: The neglected case of forward masking

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