Eye-tracking shows that target flanker similarity effects both recognition and localization performance in crowding F Yildirim, V Meyer, F Cornelissen |
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Experimental Opthalmology, University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands
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| A visual target is more difficult to recognize when other, similar, objects surround it. This is known as crowding. A recent model suggests that crowding is due to a combination of spatial and identity uncertainty [Van den Berg et al., 2012, J. Vision]. Crowding is most prominent in the periphery of the visual field. Since information from the visual periphery is used to plan eye-movements, this predicts that saccades would also be affected by crowding. Here, we used eye-tracking to test this hypothesis. In our experiment, targets and flankers consisting of gabor patches appeared on both sides of fixation in the peripheral visual field. One target was rotated slightly to the left, the other to the right. Participants made an eye-movement to the most leftward tilted target. Localization errors in the crowded conditions were determined relative to the targets presented in isolation. In our experiment, we find that the target-flanker similarity affected both recognition and saccadic localization performance, with the largest reductions in performance for identical target and flankers. These results indicate that saccades are affected by crowding and support the notion that crowding is due to a combination of spatial and identity uncertainty. |
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