title: Masking disrupts recovery of location information.
abstract: In two experiments, we tested subjects' ability to localize a letter in a character string with identification controlled by varying the delay of a mask, dimming the display, or deleting some of the dots used to define the letters on the cathode-ray screen. The first experiment involved two tasks. In the first task, subjects indicated whether or not a letter named verbally had been present in an eight-letter target string. In the second task, they localized a letter named verbally in the target string; the target string was presented by using display parameters shown in the first task to hold character identification between 70% and 75% correct. In the second experiment, we tallied errors in a partial-report bar-probe study after equating performance across the manipulations of display quality. Masking disrupted subjects' ability to recover location information more than either a manipulation of stimulus luminance or a manipulation of its visual form.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Mewhort
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Huntley
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Duff-Fraser
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010865:Pilot Projects; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception