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Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display

Crowding occurs when the presence of nearby features causes highly visible objects to become unrecognizable. Although crowding has implications for many everyday tasks and the tremendous amounts of research reflect its importance, surprisingly little is known about how depth affects crowding. Most a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Smithers, Samuel P, Shao, Yulong, Altham, James, Bex, Peter J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10476968/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37665324
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85143
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author Smithers, Samuel P
Shao, Yulong
Altham, James
Bex, Peter J
author_facet Smithers, Samuel P
Shao, Yulong
Altham, James
Bex, Peter J
author_sort Smithers, Samuel P
collection PubMed
description Crowding occurs when the presence of nearby features causes highly visible objects to become unrecognizable. Although crowding has implications for many everyday tasks and the tremendous amounts of research reflect its importance, surprisingly little is known about how depth affects crowding. Most available studies show that stereoscopic disparity reduces crowding, indicating that crowding may be relatively unimportant in three-dimensional environments. However, most previous studies tested only small stereoscopic differences in depth in which disparity, defocus blur, and accommodation are inconsistent with the real world. Using a novel multi-depth plane display, this study investigated how large (0.54–2.25 diopters), real differences in target-flanker depth, representative of those experienced between many objects in the real world, affect crowding. Our findings show that large differences in target-flanker depth increased crowding in the majority of observers, contrary to previous work showing reduced crowding in the presence of small depth differences. Furthermore, when the target was at fixation depth, crowding was generally more pronounced when the flankers were behind the target as opposed to in front of it. However, when the flankers were at fixation depth, crowding was generally more pronounced when the target was behind the flankers. These findings suggest that crowding from clutter outside the limits of binocular fusion can still have a significant impact on object recognition and visual perception in the peripheral field.
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spelling pubmed-104769682023-09-05 Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display Smithers, Samuel P Shao, Yulong Altham, James Bex, Peter J eLife Neuroscience Crowding occurs when the presence of nearby features causes highly visible objects to become unrecognizable. Although crowding has implications for many everyday tasks and the tremendous amounts of research reflect its importance, surprisingly little is known about how depth affects crowding. Most available studies show that stereoscopic disparity reduces crowding, indicating that crowding may be relatively unimportant in three-dimensional environments. However, most previous studies tested only small stereoscopic differences in depth in which disparity, defocus blur, and accommodation are inconsistent with the real world. Using a novel multi-depth plane display, this study investigated how large (0.54–2.25 diopters), real differences in target-flanker depth, representative of those experienced between many objects in the real world, affect crowding. Our findings show that large differences in target-flanker depth increased crowding in the majority of observers, contrary to previous work showing reduced crowding in the presence of small depth differences. Furthermore, when the target was at fixation depth, crowding was generally more pronounced when the flankers were behind the target as opposed to in front of it. However, when the flankers were at fixation depth, crowding was generally more pronounced when the target was behind the flankers. These findings suggest that crowding from clutter outside the limits of binocular fusion can still have a significant impact on object recognition and visual perception in the peripheral field. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2023-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10476968/ /pubmed/37665324 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85143 Text en © 2023, Smithers et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Smithers, Samuel P
Shao, Yulong
Altham, James
Bex, Peter J
Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title_full Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title_fullStr Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title_full_unstemmed Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title_short Large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: Evidence from a multi-depth plane display
title_sort large depth differences between target and flankers can increase crowding: evidence from a multi-depth plane display
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10476968/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37665324
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85143
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