title: Supercrowding: weakly masking a target expands the range of crowding.
abstract: Crowding is impairment of peripheral object identification by nearby objects. Critical spacing (the minimum target-flanker distance that does not produce crowding) scales with target eccentricity and is consistently reported as roughly equal to or less than 50% of target eccentricity (0.5e). This study demonstrates that crowding occurs far beyond the typical critical spacing when the target is weakly masked by a surrounding contour or backwards pattern mask. A target was presented at a peripheral location on every trial and participants reported its orientation. Flankers appeared at target-flanker distances of 0.3-0.7e, or were absent. The target was presented with or without a mask. When flankers were absent, the masks only mildly impaired performance. When flankers were present but the mask was absent, target identification was nearly perfect at wide target-flanker distances (0.5e-0.7e). However, when flankers were present and the target was masked, performance dropped significantly, even when target-flanker distances far exceeded the typical crowding range. This phenomenon ("supercrowding") shares critical features with standard crowding: flankers similar to the target impair performance more than dissimilar flankers, and the characteristic anisotropic profile of crowding is preserved. Supercrowding may reflect a general interaction between crowding and other forms of masking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA. tim.vickery@gmail.com
authors.forename: Timothy J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Vickery
authors.forename: Won Mok
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Shim
authors.forename: Ramakrishna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chakravarthi
authors.forename: Yuhong V
authors.initials: YV
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Luedeman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016880:Anisotropy; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D013028:Space Perception; D014794:Visual Fields