Lesser crowding of horizontal letter strings extends beyond parafovea D Vejnovic1, S Zdravkovic2 |
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1Faculty of Education, University of Novi Sad, Serbia |
| One recent study [Grainger et al, 2010, JEP: HPP, 36 (3), 673- 688] demonstrated that letters are less prone to crowding than other symbols. This finding, that seemingly contradicts the conventional bottom-up view of crowding [e.g. Pelli & Tillman, 2008, Nature Neuroscience, 11(10): 1129 - 1135], was further examined in our previous experiments [Vejnovic & Zdravkovic, 2012, Perception 41 ECVP Abstract Supplement, p. 160- 161]. In those experiments we found that reduced parafoveal crowding of letters was determined by string orientation: the effect was observed in horizontally but not in vertically oriented strings of three characters. Here we present an experiment in which the same 2-AFC procedure was used to test letter and symbol crowding in the peripheral visual field. Results of the peripheral experiment closely replicated those of the parafoveal experiment. Crowding of symbols did not depend on the string orientation and was comparable to the level observed in vertical strings of letters. Importantly, horizontally flanked letters received substantially lower amount of crowding. Radial- tangential anisotropy was characteristic of the crowding of both letters and symbols. [This research was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia (grant numbers: 179033 and III47020.] |
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