Abstract
This experiment demonstrates what we call a proximity effect in forced-choice visual detection: Detection accuracy improves as the distance is increased between the target and the noise items in the array that are confusable with it. The proximity effect is a natural prediction of Estes’s theory that detection is mediated by feature-detecting receptive fields, but other recent models of visual detection do not predict it. However, the pattern of results seems best explained in terms of perceptual configurations in the array; when the target is grouped with confusable noise its visibility is less than when it is not.
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This research was supported by a Pomona College Faculty Research Grant to W, P. Banks. The authors thank W. R. Garner and E. E. Smith for their valuable comments on this experiment.
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Banks, W.P., Bodinger, D. & Illige, M. Visual detection accuracy and target-noise proximity. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 4, 411–414 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336737
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336737