Recognition of letters displayed as successive contour fragments

Sherry Zhang; Jack Morrison; Wei Wang; Ernest Greene; Sherry Zhang; Jack Morrison; Wei Wang; Ernest Greene

doi:10.3934/Neuroscience.2022028

AIMS Neuroscience

2022, Volume 9, Issue 4: 491-515. doi: 10.3934/Neuroscience.2022028

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Research article

Recognition of letters displayed as successive contour fragments

1.
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90007, United States of America
2.
Neuropsychology Foundation, Sun Valley, CA 91353, United States of America
3.
Departments of Medicine and Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States of America

Received: 24 August 2022 Revised: 01 December 2022 Accepted: 04 December 2022 Published: 12 December 2022

Shapes can be displayed as parts but perceived as a whole through feedforward and feedback mechanisms in the visual system, though the exact spatiotemporal relationships for this process are still unclear. Our experiments examined the integration of letter fragments that were displayed as a rapid sequence. We examined the effects of timing and masking on integration, hypothesizing that increasing the timing interval between frames would impair recognition by disrupting contour linkage. We further used different mask types, a full-field pattern mask and a smaller strip mask, to examine the effects of global vs local masking on integration. We found that varying mask types and contrast produced a greater decline in recognition than was found when persistence or mask density was manipulated. The study supports prior work on letter recognition and provides greater insight into the spatiotemporal factors that contribute to the identification of shapes.
- vision,
- persistence,
- letter encoding,
- masking,
- visual integration
Citation: Sherry Zhang, Jack Morrison, Wei Wang, Ernest Greene. Recognition of letters displayed as successive contour fragments[J]. AIMS Neuroscience, 2022, 9(4): 491-515. doi: 10.3934/Neuroscience.2022028

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Abstract

Shapes can be displayed as parts but perceived as a whole through feedforward and feedback mechanisms in the visual system, though the exact spatiotemporal relationships for this process are still unclear. Our experiments examined the integration of letter fragments that were displayed as a rapid sequence. We examined the effects of timing and masking on integration, hypothesizing that increasing the timing interval between frames would impair recognition by disrupting contour linkage. We further used different mask types, a full-field pattern mask and a smaller strip mask, to examine the effects of global vs local masking on integration. We found that varying mask types and contrast produced a greater decline in recognition than was found when persistence or mask density was manipulated. The study supports prior work on letter recognition and provides greater insight into the spatiotemporal factors that contribute to the identification of shapes.

Abbreviations

AUC

area under the curve

EEG

electroencephalography

ERP

event related potential

fMRI

functional magnetic resonance imaging

LED

light emitting diode

ROC

receiver operating characteristic

primary visual cortex

Acknowledgments

Funding was provided by the Quest for Truth Foundation and the Neuropsychology Foundation. Tailai Shen assisted in coordination of test administration and data processing.

Conflict of interest

All authors declare no conflicts of interest in this paper.

Permission to reuse and copyright

Figures, tables, and images can be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence. No copyrighted material is included within the manuscript.

Resource identification initiative

RRID identifiers are not relevant to this work.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Author contributions

Abstract, Introduction and Discussion primarily by SZ. Methods and results primarily be EG. Program created and designed by JM and EG. Statistical analyses done by WW. Experimental design by EG, JM, and SZ.

Funding

Funding was provided by the Quest for Truth Foundation and the Neuropsychology Foundation.

Data availability statement

Datasets for this study will be posted in whatever repository is recommended by the journal production staff.

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