Evaluating spatiotemporal integration of shape cues

Prior work has shown that humans can successfully identify letters that are constructed with a sparse array of dots, wherein the dot pattern reflects the strokes that would normally be used to fashion a given letter. In the present work the dots were briefly displayed, one at a time in sequence, varying the spatial order in which they were shown. A forward sequence was spatially ordered as though one were passing a stroke across the dots to connect them. Experiments compared this baseline condition to the following three conditions: a) the dot sequence was spatially ordered, but in the reverse direction from how letter strokes might normally be written; b) the dots in each stroke of the letter were displayed in a random order; c) the sequence of displayed dots were chosen for display from any location in the letter. Significant differences were found between the baseline condition and all three of the comparison conditions, with letter recognition being far worse for the random conditions than for conditions that provided consistent spatial ordering of dot sequences. These findings show that spatial order is critical for integration of shape cues that have been sequentially displayed.