Abstract
Salient items are usually easier to search. However, our previous work established an interesting phenomenon that a salient target was more difficult to search than that in the background. The phenomenon was observed in a search display where the salient region was formed by collinear grouping, thus we called it the collinear masking effect. This study aimed to test whether factors reduce grouping can also decrease the collinear masking effect. Three experiments was carried out to test conditions increasing spacing, scale, or number of items in the background, respectively. The results confirmed that the collinear masking effect indeed reduced when grouping strength was weaker. Another control experiment confired that the reduction of the collinear masking effect was not due to expending eccentricity with the increasing spacing or scale, neither due to different orientation of the target. Our data support the idea that the collinear masking effect was associated with perceptual grouping. Further evidence is needed to investigate why such a salient grouping can mask a local target.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018