Valorie Wiseman^1,3, Summer Sheremata^2,3; ¹Neuroscience Graduate Program, ²Department of Psychology, ³Florida Atlantic University

When spotting signs in a busy area, searching for a friend in a crowd, or even reading this text, visual crowding plays a role in many of our daily tasks. Crowding is the phenomenon that occurs when the presence of nearby distractors makes it hard to identify an object. The role of attention in crowding is well-supported, but the specifics remain the subject of active debate. Asymmetries in the visual field have been identified, with greater crowding effects seen in the upper, as compared to the lower, visual field. Greater crowding has also been identified in the left, as compared to the right, visual field. However, these asymmetries have been found using letter stimuli. It is possible, however, that left/right visual field asymmetries reflect language processing or another process underlying visual crowding. Therefore, in order to rule out asymmetries in language processing, we asked participants to perform a crowding experiment in which contrast-defined gabors were presented to 5° to left and right of fixation. In the crowding block, flanking gabors were present at distances of 2°, 3°, or 4° center-to-center. In the isolation block, no distractors were present. Accuracy increased with target-distractor distance across the 3 conditions. Importantly, accuracy was lower (greater crowding) in the left, as compared to right, visual field. These asymmetries were not seen in the isolation block. We, therefore, found that observers are more accurate at identifying crowded targets and, therefore, have significantly decreased crowding effects in the right visual field when compared to the left visual field. Furthermore, these results cannot be explained by asymmetric language processing. This rightward bias in crowding establishes a greater understanding of the role of visual field asymmetries in visual crowding.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the June Jones fellowship to V.W.