The effect of target-flanker congruency in visual crowding with complex scenes

Abstract

In visual crowding, the presence of surrounding clutter impairs recognition of a peripherally presented target object. Crowding is thought to be the consequence of processes that inappropriately integrate information from neighbouring objects. For simple stimuli (e.g., orientation bars) that have single features (e.g., colour), random or ‘incongruent’ clutter can have an even greater effect on recognition when the surrounding items are similar to the target item. Less is known about how crowding affects recognition when the surrounding items share a natural and global similarity with the target. The current study investigated the extent to which recognition is enhanced when the surrounding clutter is ‘congruent’ with the category of the target. Two experiments were developed to test the effect of target-flanker congruency on visual crowding. Using a recognition task and a discrimination task, it was found that when a target painting or scene is surrounded by other images of the same artistic style or natural category, visual crowding can be markedly reduced (Experiment 1) or even eliminated (Experiment 2). Visual crowding is widely thought to place a fundamental limit on perception, but the results presented here demonstrate that visual context may not always be a detriment to recognition in peripheral vision.