The Spatial Proximity And Arrangements Of Stimuli Influence Visual Masking

Visual masking refers to the phenomenon that the visibility of the briefly presented target’s decline is due to a second briefly presented masking stimulus which in spatial and temporal adjacent to the target. Stimuli which contained target and distractors are shown to be noticed and remembered. Target is a stimulus which needs to be recognized or reported. Mask is a stimulus which impairs the visibility of target.In order to examine how masking is influenced by the spatial proximity and arrangements of stimuli. This research did3experiments using graduate students from a college as subjects.In Experiment1, the author used brief displays which contain16outline rings, each containing a gap either at top, bottom, left, or right. One of the rings was singled out as the target by four dots, all these rings were arranged in4*4in3different spatial proximities(lcm、3cm、5cm), to examine whether masking was influenced by the spatial proximity between stimuli. Results indicated that when stimuli were rings with gap, the spatial proximity between stimuli didn’t influence masking.Experiment2was the same as Experiment1, except using16black capital letters as stimuli, to further examine whether masking was influenced by3different spatial proximities between stimuli(1cm、3cm、5cm). Results indicated that when stimuli were more complicated letters, the spatial proximity letween stimuli had significant effect on masking. More centralized stimuli caused less masking, and more decentralized stimuli caused more masking.In Experiment3, the author examined when stimuli were in the same distance, whether4different arrangements (horizontal arrangement, vertical arrangement, diagonal arrangement and4*4arrangement) affected masking. Results indicated that arrangements of stimuli had significant effect on masking. When stimuli were arranged in4*4, visual masking effect was the least; when stimuli were arranged in horizontal, visual masking effect was stronger than4*4arrangement; when stimuli were arranged in diagonal, visual masking effect was stronger than horizontal arrangement; the strongest visual masking effect was vertical arrangement.