Abstract
This study reports four experiments that analyzed detection performance for luminance contrasts as a function of retinal eccentricity in order to find further support and explanations for the central performance drop (CPD) in the fovea. In the first experiment, 10 participants (16–37 years of age) had to detect a target patch in a stimulus consisting of bright and dark pixels. Luminance differences between target and context areas were achieved by placing a different number of bright (and dark) pixels in the target and the context area. Results showed a marked CPD; that is, performance did not peak in the fovea but in the parafovea. A spatial integration hypothesis was proposed to explain this CPD. Alternative explanations were tested in three further experiments with a total of 28 participants from 19–46 years of age (using the decision criterion effect, the selective masking effect, and inhibition by high frequencies). The findings did not contradict the spatial-integration hypothesis.
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This research was supported by Grants ME 1656/2-1 and KE 388/4-1 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We thank Stefanie Harbich and Julia Tasche for their help in running the experiments, and Jonathan Harrow for native-speaker advice.
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Meinecke, C., Kehrer, L. A central performance drop with luminance stimuli requiring spatial integration. Perception & Psychophysics 69, 923–929 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193929
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193929