Lateral masking: limitations of the feature interaction account

Recognition performance for a target letter embedded in a string of characters is worse than that for targets presented in isolation. This lateral masking (LM) effect is known to depend on target eccentricity and spacing between target and flankers (Bouma, 1970), indicating that LM arises in early visual processing due to interactions among visual features. The feature interaction account would predict that flankers consisting of similar features produce similar LM effects and that differences in LM produced by different types of flanker diminish with increasing target eccentricity and decreasing spacing. However, in a series of six experiments, this prediction was shown not to be true. Flankers that did not access a higher level code (e.g., pseudoletters or rotated letters) produced more LM than standard letter flankers. Moreover, effects of different flanker types were most pronounced for medium target eccentricities and medium spacings for which recognition performance scores ranged between 40% and 60%.