Cheung Leo Yuk Ting, Cheung Sing-Hang
Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
J Vis. 2017 Sep 1;17(11):14. doi: 10.1167/17.11.14.
Crowding impedes the identification of flanked objects in peripheral vision. Prior studies have shown crowding strength decreases with target-flanker similarity. Research on crowding in Chinese-character recognition has been scarce in the literature. We aimed to fill the research gap by examining the effects of structural similarity on Chinese-character crowding. Regularity in within-character configuration, i.e., orthographic legality, of flankers was manipulated in Experiment 1. Target-flanker similarity in orthographic legality did not affect crowding strength, measured as contrast threshold elevation. Crowding weakened only when the strokes in the flankers were scrambled. Contour integrity of flankers was manipulated by randomly perturbing the phase spectra of the stimulus images in Experiments 2a and 2b. Crowding by perturbed-phase flankers remained robust but was weaker compared with intact-phase flankers. Target-flanker similarity in contour integrity modulated crowding strength. Our findings were consistent with the postulation that faulty integration of low-level visual features contributed to crowding of Chinese characters. Studies on Chinese-character recognition and crowding can provide important insights into how the visual system processes complex daily objects.
拥挤会妨碍在周边视觉中识别被侧翼刺激包围的物体。先前的研究表明，拥挤强度会随着目标与侧翼刺激的相似度降低而减弱。在文献中，关于汉字识别中的拥挤现象的研究很少。我们旨在通过研究结构相似性对汉字拥挤的影响来填补这一研究空白。在实验1中，我们操纵了侧翼刺激的字内结构规律性，即正字法合法性。目标与侧翼刺激在正字法合法性上的相似性并未影响以对比度阈值升高来衡量的拥挤强度。只有当侧翼刺激的笔画被打乱时，拥挤才会减弱。在实验2a和2b中，我们通过随机扰动刺激图像的相位谱来操纵侧翼刺激的轮廓完整性。相位被扰动的侧翼刺激所引起的拥挤仍然很强烈，但与相位完整的侧翼刺激相比要弱一些。目标与侧翼刺激在轮廓完整性上的相似性调节了拥挤强度。我们的研究结果与以下假设一致，即低水平视觉特征的错误整合导致了汉字拥挤现象。关于汉字识别和拥挤的研究可以为视觉系统如何处理复杂的日常物体提供重要见解。
