Semizer Yelda, Yu Dian, Wan Qianqian, Balas Benjamin, Rosenholtz Ruth
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA.
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Feb;87(2):637-649. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-03000-7. Epub 2025 Jan 10.
As mazes are typically complex, cluttered stimuli, solving them is likely limited by visual crowding. Thus, several aspects of the appearance of the maze - the thickness, spacing, and curvature of the paths, as well as the texture of both paths and walls - likely influence the performance. In the current study, we investigate the effects of perceptual aspects of maze design on maze-solving performance to understand the role of crowding and visual complexity. We conducted two experiments using a set of controlled stimuli to examine the effects of path and wall thickness, as well as the style of rendering used for both paths and walls. Experiment 1 finds that maze-solving time increases with thicker paths (thus thinner walls). Experiment 2 replicates this finding while also showing that maze-solving time increases when mazes have wavy walls, which are likely more crowded, rather than straight walls. Our findings imply a role of both crowding and figure/ground segmentation in mental maze solving and suggest reformulating the growth cone models.
由于迷宫通常是复杂、杂乱的刺激物，解决迷宫问题可能会受到视觉拥挤的限制。因此，迷宫外观的几个方面——路径的粗细、间距和曲率，以及路径和墙壁的纹理——可能会影响表现。在当前的研究中，我们调查迷宫设计的感知方面对解决迷宫问题表现的影响，以了解拥挤和视觉复杂性的作用。我们进行了两项实验，使用一组受控刺激来检查路径和墙壁的厚度以及路径和墙壁所使用的渲染风格的影响。实验1发现，解决迷宫的时间随着路径变厚（即墙壁变薄）而增加。实验2重复了这一发现，同时还表明，当迷宫有波浪形墙壁（可能更拥挤）而不是直墙壁时，解决迷宫的时间会增加。我们的研究结果暗示了拥挤和图形/背景分割在心理迷宫解决中的作用，并建议重新制定生长锥模型。
