Visual detection accuracy and target-noise proximity

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. © 1974, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.