Skoczek, Kristian P;
Acton, Jennifer H;
Greenwood, John A;
Redmond, Tony;
(2025)
Target-flanker similarity alters the spatial profile of visual
crowding.
Journal of Vision
, 25
(12)
, Article 17. 10.1167/jov.25.12.17.
(In press).
Preview |
PDF
Target-flanker similarity alters the spatial profile of visual crowding.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Visual crowding is the disruptive effect of nearby details on the perception of a target. This influence is dependent on both spatial separation and perceived similarity between target and flanker elements. However, it is not clear how these simultaneous influences combine to produce the final “crowded” percept as flankers traverse the limits of the crowding zone. We investigated the reported appearance of a peripherally presented Landolt-C target flanked by a pair of simultaneously presented Landolt-Cs across different levels of target-flanker similarity (relative orientation), spatial separation, and target eccentricity. The distributions of errors in reported target orientation were fitted with a pooling model that simulated errors using a weighted combination of target and flanker orientation signals. The change in error distribution with target-flanker spacing (the “spatial profile”) was fitted with a logistic function, estimating both the rate at which target- and flanker-signal weighting varies as target-flanker spatial separation decreases (slope) and the spatial separation at which signals were balanced (midpoint). We found that the slope of the spatial profile increases as target-flanker similarity decreases, with similar modulation patterns across target eccentricities. In contrast, spatial profile midpoints increased linearly with eccentricity, in line with Bouma's law, but were invariant of target-flanker similarity. This suggests similarity-related modulation may operate within a fixed spatial extent at each eccentricity. Investigating the spatial profile of crowding disentangles effects related to the appearance of targets and flankers (i.e., similarity) from appearance-independent influences, which can be confounded when using other common measures to define crowding zone extent.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Target-flanker similarity alters the spatial profile of visual crowding |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1167/jov.25.12.17 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.25.12.17 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Ophthalmology, INTEGRATION, ACUITY, CORTEX |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216123 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
