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Using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Measure Set-Specific Capture, a Consequence of Distraction While Multitasking

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Visual crowding: a fundamental limit on conscious perception and object recognition.

David Whitney¹, Dennis M Levi

¹Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

|March 23, 2011

Summary

Crowding, the inability to recognize objects in clutter, limits visual perception. This review defines crowding and identifies factors influencing it, concluding it occurs at multiple visual processing stages.

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Area of Science:

Visual perception
Cognitive neuroscience
Psychology

Background:

Crowding is the inability to recognize objects in clutter.
It limits visual perception and object recognition across most of the visual field.
Crowding is essential for object recognition, reading, and visually guided actions.

Purpose of the Study:

To synthesize recent findings on visual crowding.
To define crowding and its characteristics.
To explore factors that influence crowding and its occurrence across visual processing stages.

Main Methods:

Literature review and synthesis of recent research on visual crowding.
Development of six diagnostic criteria for identifying crowding.
Analysis of factors that escape or break crowding.

Main Results:

Crowding is defined by six diagnostic criteria.
Factors that influence crowding (escaping and breaking) have been identified.
Evidence suggests crowding occurs at multiple stages within the visual hierarchy.

Conclusions:

Crowding is a fundamental limitation on visual perception and object recognition.
Understanding crowding requires considering factors beyond low-level vision.
Crowding is a complex phenomenon occurring at multiple levels of visual processing.