Feature detection and letter identification

Vision Research

Volumn 46, Issue 28, 2006, Pages 4646-4674

  Pelli, Denis G ^a   Burns, Catherine W ^a   Farell, Bart ^a   Moore Page, Deborah C ^a  

^a Syracuse Institute for Sensory Research   (United States)

Author keywords

Alexia; Categorization; Complexity; Decision; Efficiency; Feature detection; Features; Ideal observer; Letter identification; Letter by letter reading; Letters; Noise; Object recognition; Pattern recognition; Probability summation; Reading; Simultanagnosia

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; ARTICLE; BRAIN FUNCTION; CHILD; CONTROLLED STUDY; GESTALT THERAPY; HUMAN; LANGUAGE; NORMAL HUMAN; OBSERVER VARIATION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; READING; RECOGNITION; SPELLING; VISUAL STIMULATION; WORD RECOGNITION;

EID: 33750970289     PISSN: 00426989     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2006.04.023     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. Alexander K.R., Xie W., and Derlacki D.J. Spatial-frequency characteristics of letter identification. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 11 (1994) 2375-2382
2. Arguin M., and Bub D.N. Functional mechanisms in pure alexia: evidence from letter processing. In: Farah M.J., and Ratcliff G. (Eds). The neuropsychology of high-level vision (1994), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ
3. Arnoult M.D. Prediction of perceptual responses from structural characteristics of the stimulus. Perceptual and Motor Skills 11 (1960) 261-268
4. Attneave F. Symmetry, information, and memory for patterns. American Journal of Psychology 68 (1955) 183-193
5. Attneave F. Physical determinants of the judged complexity of shapes. Journal of Experimental Psychology 53 (1957) 221-227
6. Attneave F., and Arnoult M.D. The quantitative study of shape and pattern perception. Psychological Bulletin 53 (1956) 452-471
7. Baddeley A.D. Working memory (1986), Oxford University Press, Oxford
8. Barlow H.B. The efficiency of detecting changes of density in random dot patterns. Vision Research 18 (1978) 637-650
9. Belongie S., Malik J., and Puzicha J. Shape matching and object recognition using shape contexts. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 24 4 (2002) 509-522 [PDF]
10. Blommaert F.J. Early-visual factors in letter confusions. Spatial Vision 3 (1988) 199-224
11. Bouma H. Visual recognition of isolated lower-case letters. Vision Research 11 (1971) 450-474
12. Braje W.L., Tjan B.S., and Legge G.E. Human efficiency for recognizing and detecting low-pass filtered objects. Vision Research 35 (1995) 2955-2966
13. Briggs R., and Hocevar D.J. A new distinctive feature theory for upper case letters. Journal of General Psychology 93 (1975) 87-93
14. Brindley G.S. The order of coincidence required for visual thresholds. Proceedings of the Physical Society of London Series B 67 (1954) 673-676
15. Brooks L. Spatial and verbal components of the act of recall. Canadian Journal of Psychology 22 (1968) 349-368
16. Burgess A.E., Wagner R.F., Jennings R.J., and Barlow H.B. Efficiency of human visual signal discrimination. Science 214 (1981) 93-94
17. Burns, C. W. (1995). Identifying letters. Ph.D. thesis. Special Report ISR-S-33. Institute for Sensory Research, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.
18. Buschke H. Retention in immediate memory span estimated without retrieval. Science 140 (1963) 56-57
19. Campbell F.W., and Robson J.G. The application of Fourier analysis to the visibility of gratings. Journal of Physiology 197 (1968) 551-566
20. Cattell J.M. The time taken up by cerebral operations. Part 3. Mind 11 (1896) 377-392
21. Cavanagh, P. Correlational and structural models of alphabetic confusion. Unpublished manuscript.
22. Chung S.T.L., Legge G.E., and Tjan B.S. Spatial-frequency characteristics of letter identification in central and peripheral vision. Vision Research 42 (2002) 2137-2152
23. Chung S.T.L., Levi D.M., and Tjan B.S. Learning letter identification in peripheral vision. Vision Research 45 11 (2005) 1399-1412
24. Cortázar J. Hopscotch (1966), Pantheon Books, New York p. 36
25. Davis E.T., Kramer P., and Graham N. Uncertainty about spatial frequency, spatial position, or contrast of visual patterns. Perception & Psychophysics 33 (1983) 20-28
26. DeFrancis J. Character text for beginning Chinese. 2nd ed. (1976), Yale University Press, New Haven, CT
27. Duda R.O., and Hart P.E. Pattern recognition and scene analysis (1973), Wiley, New York
28. Edelman S., Flash T., and Ullman S. Reading cursive handwriting by alignment of letter prototypes. International Journal of Computer Vision 5 3 (1990) 303-331
29. Ellis W.D. A source book of Gestalt psychology (1938), Harcourt, Brace, and Co., New York
30. Erdmann B., and Dodge R. Psychologische Untersuchungen über das Lesen auf experimenteller Grundlage (1898), Niemeyer, Halle
31. Eriksen C.W. The use of a visual mask may seriously confound your experiment. Perception & Psychophysics 28 1 (1980) 89-92
32. Fahle M., and Edelman S. Long-term learning in vernier acuity: effects of stimulus orientation, range and of feedback. Vision Research 33 (1993) 397-412
33. Fairbank A. A book of scripts (1952), Penguin Books Ltd., Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England
34. Farah M.J. Patterns of co-occurrence among the associative agnosias: implications for visual object representation. Cognitive Neuropsychology 8 (1991) 1-19
35. Farah M.J. Specialization within visual object recognition: clues from prosopagnosia and alexia. In: Farah M.J., and Ratcliff G. (Eds). The neuropsychology of high-level vision (1994), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ 133-146
36. Farell B., and Pelli D.G. Can we attend to large and small at the same time?. Vision Research 33 (1993) 2757-2772
37. Fehrer E.V. An investigation of the learning of visually perceived forms. American Journal of Psychology 47 (1935) 187-221
38. Garner W.R. Good patterns have few alternatives. American Scientist 58 1 (1970) 34-42
39. Geisler W.S. Sequential ideal-observer analysis of visual discriminations. Psychological Review 96 2 (1989) 267-314
40. Geisler W., and Murray R. Cognitive neuroscience: Practice doesn't make perfect. Nature 423 6941 (2003) 696-697
41. Gervais M.J., Harvey Jr. L.O., and Roberts J.O. Identification confusions among letters of the alphabet. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance 10 (1984) 655-666
42. Geyer L.H. Recognition and confusion of the lowercase alphabet. Perception & Psychophysics 22 (1977) 487-490
43. Gibson E.J. Principles of perceptual learning and development (1969), Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York
44. Gibson E.J., Gibson J.J., Pick A.D., and Osser H. A developmental study of the discrimination of letter-like forms. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 55 (1962) 897-906
45. Gibson, E. J., Osser, H., Schiff, W., & Smith, J. (1963). An analysis of critical features of letters tested by a confusion matrix. In A basic research program on reading. Cooperative Research Project No. 639, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
46. Gilbert C.D., and Wiesel T.N. Receptive field dynamics in adult primary visual cortex. Nature 356 (1992) 150-152
47. Gold J., Bennett P.J., and Sekuler A.B. Identification of band-pass filtered letters and faces by human and ideal observers. Vision Research 39 21 (1999) 3537-3560
48. Gold J., Bennett P.J., and Sekuler A.B. Signal but not noise changes with perceptual learning. Nature 402 6758 (1999) 176-178
49. Graham N. Visual detection of aperiodic spatial stimuli by probability summation among narrowband channels. Vision Research 17 (1977) 637-652
50. Graham N. Spatial-frequency channels in human vision: detecting edges without edge detectors. In: Harris C. (Ed). Visual coding and adaptability (1980), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 215-252
51. Graham N.V.S. Visual pattern analyzers (1989), Oxford University Press, Oxford
52. Hadley J.A., and Healy A.F. When are reading units larger than the letter? Refinement of the unitization reading model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 17 (1991) 1062-1073
53. Hanley J.R., and Kay J. Does letter-by-letter reading involve the spelling system?. Neuropsychologia 30 3 (1992) 237-256
54. Höffding H. Outlines of psychology (1891), Macmillan, New York
55. Karni A., and Sagi D. Where practice makes perfect in texture discrimination: evidence for primary visual cortex plasticity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA 88 11 (1991) 4966-4970
56. King-Smith P.E., Grigsby S.S., Vingrys A.J., Benes S.C., and Supowit A. Efficient and unbiased modifications of the QUEST threshold method: theory, simulations, experimental evaluation and practical implementation. Vision Research 34 (1994) 885-912
57. Kinsbourne M., and Warrington E.K. A disorder of simultaneous form perception. Brain 85 (1962) 461-486
58. Kinsbourne M., and Warrington E.K. The localizing significance of limited simultaneous visual form perception. Brain 86 (1963) 697-702
59. Kolers P.A. Memorial consequences of automatized encoding. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Learning and Memory 1 (1975) 689-701
60. Krauskopf J., Duryea R.A., and Bitterman M.E. Thresholds for visual form: further experiments. American Journal of Psychology 67 (1954) 427-440
61. Kučera H., and Francis W.N. Computational analysis of present-day American English (1967), Brown University Press, Providence, RI
62. Legge G.E., Mansfield J.S., and Chung S.T. Psychophysics of reading. XX. Linking letter recognition to reading speed in central and peripheral vision. Vision Research 41 6 (2001) 725-743
63. Legge G.E., Pelli D.G., Rubin G.S., and Schleske M.M. Psychophysics of reading-I. Normal vision. Vision Research 25 (1985) 239-252
64. Lennie P. Roles of M and P pathways. In: Shapley R., and Lam D.M.-K. (Eds). Contrast sensitivity (1993), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 201-213
65. Loomis J.M. Analysis of tactile and visual confusion matrices. Perception & Psychophysics 31 (1982) 41-52
66. Loomis J.M. A model of character recognition and legibility. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance 16 1 (1990) 106-120
67. Luce R.D. Detection and recognition. In: Luce R.D., Bush R.B., and Galanter E. (Eds). Handbook of mathematical psychology Vol. 1 (1963), Wiley, New York
68. Majaj N.J., Pelli D.G., Kurshan P., and Palomares M. The role of spatial frequency channels in letter identification. Vision Research 42 9 (2002) 1165-1184
69. Majaj N.J., Liang Y.X., Martelli M., Berger T.D., and Pelli D.G. The channel for reading. Journal of Vision 3 9 (2003) 813. http://www.journalofvision.org/3/9/813/ Available from http://www.journalofvision.org/3/9/813/
70. Marr D. Vision (1982), W.H. Freeman & Company, San Francisco
71. Martelli, M., Baweja, G., Mishra, A., Chen, I., Fox, J., Majaj, N. J., et al. (2002). How efficiency for identifying objects improves with age. Perception, ECVP Supplement. Available from: .
72. Martelli, M., Baweja, G., Mishra, A., Majaj, N. J., & Pelli, D. G. (in preparation). Learning to recognize objects: efficiency for faces, letters, and pictograms. Vision Research.
73. McCandliss B.D., Cohen L., and Dehaene S. The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (2003) 293-299
74. Miller G.A. The magic number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review 63 (1956) 81-97
75. Miller G.A. Human memory and the storage of information. IRE Transactions on Information Theory IT-2 3 (1956) 129-137
76. Morgan M.J., Fitch M.D., Holman J.D., and Lea S.E.G. Pigeons learn the concept of an 'A'. Perception 5 (1976) 57-66
77. Nachmias J. On the psychometric function for contrast detection. Vision Research 21 (1981) 215-223
78. Nakayama K. The iconic bottleneck and the tenuous link between early visual processing and perception. In: Blakemore C. (Ed). Vision: Coding and efficiency (1990), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 411-422
79. National Academy of Sciences-National Research Committee on Vision (1980). Report of working group 39: recommended standard procedures for the clinical measurement and specification of visual acuity. Advances in Ophthalmology, 41, 103-148.
80. Näsänen R., Kukkonen H., and Rovamo J. Spatial integration of band-pass filtered patterns in noise. Vision Research 33 (1993) 903-911
81. Näsänen R., Kukkonen H., and Rovamo J. Relationship between spatial integration and spatial spread of contrast energy in detection. Vision Research 34 (1994) 949-954
82. Näsänen R.E., Kukkonen H.T., and Rovamo J.M. A window model for spatial integration in human pattern discrimination. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 36 (1995) 1855-1862
83. Nuttall A.H. Error probabilities for equicorrelated M-ary signals under phase coherent and phase incoherent reception. IRE Transactions IT-8 4 (1962) 305-314
84. Olshausen B.A., Anderson C.H., and Van Essen D.C. A neurobiological model of visual attention and invariant pattern recognition based on dynamic routing of information. Journal of Neuroscience 13 (1993) 4700-4719
85. Parish D.H., and Sperling G. Object spatial frequencies, retinal spatial frequencies, noise, and the efficiency of letter discrimination. Vision Research 31 (1991) 1399-1415
86. Patterson K., and Kay J. Letter-by-letter reading: psychological descriptions of a neurological syndrome. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 34A (1982) 411-441
87. Pavel M., Sperling G., Riedl T., and Vanderbeek A. Limits of visual communication: the effect of signal-to-noise ratio on the intelligibility of American Sign Language. Journal of the Optical Society of America (A) 4 12 (1987) 2355-2365
88. Pelli, D. G. (1981). Effects of visual noise. Ph.D. Thesis. Cambridge University, Cambridge, England. Available from http://psych.nyu.edu/pelli/pub/pelli1981thesis.pdf [PDF].
89. Pelli D.G. Uncertainty explains many aspects of visual contrast detection and discrimination. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 2 (1985) 1508-1532
90. Pelli D.G. The quantum efficiency of vision. In: Blakemore C. (Ed). Vision: Coding and efficiency (1990), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 3-24
91. Pelli D.G., and Farell B. Visual memory. Perception 21 Supplement 2 (1992) 71
92. Pelli D.G., and Farell B. Why use notice?. Journal of the Optical Society of America A-Optics Image Science and Vision 16 3 (1999) 647-653
93. Pelli D.G., and Hoepner J.A. Letters in noise: a visual test chart that "bypasses" the optics. Noninvasive assessment of the visual system, 1989 technical digest series Vol. 7 (1989), Optical Society of America, Washington, DC 103-106
94. Pelli D.G., Farell B., and Moore D.C. The remarkable inefficiency of word recognition. Nature 423 6941 (2003) 752-756
95. Pelli D.G., Levi D.M., and Chung S.T. Using visual noise to characterize amblyopic letter identification. Journal of Vision 4 10 (2004) 904-920. http://journalofvision.org/4/10/6/ Available from http://journalofvision.org/4/10/6/
96. Pelli D.G., and Zhang L. Accurate control of contrast on microcomputer displays. Vision Research 31 (1991) 1337-1350
97. Peterson W.W., Birdsall T.G., and Fox W.C. Theory of signal detectability. Transactions of the IRE PGIT 4 (1954) 171-212
98. Peterson L.R., and Peterson M.J. Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology 58 (1959) 193-198
99. Polk T.A., and Farah M.J. The neural development and organization of letter recognition: evidence from functional neuroimaging, computational modeling, and behavioral studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 95 (1999) 847-852
100. Polk A.T., Stallcup M., Aquirre G.K., Alsop D.C., D'Esposito M., Detre J.A., et al. Neural specialization for letter recognition. Journal of Neuroscience 14 (2002) 145-159
101. Pons T.P., Garraghty P.E., and Mishkin M. Lesion-induced plasticity in the second somatosensory cortex of adult macaques. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 85 (1988) 5281-5297
102. Quick Jr. R.F. A vector-magnitude model of contrast detection. Kybernetik 16 2 (1974) 65-67
103. Raghavan, M. (1995). Sources of visual noise. Ph.D. Thesis. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
104. Raghavan, M., & Pelli, D. G. (in preparation). Photon and cortical noise limit what we see. Nature.
105. Rayner K., and Pollatsek A. The psychology of reading (1989), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
106. Razel, M. (1974). The path of visual scanning and the order of search in short-term memory. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Psychology Dept., New York University, New York, NY.
107. Ress D., and Heeger D.J. Neuronal correlates of perception in early visual cortex. Nature Neuroscience 6 4 (2003) 414-420
108. Riesenhuber M., and Poggio T. Models of object recognition. Nature Neuroscience 3 Suppl. (2000) 1199-1204
109. Robson J.G., and Graham N. Probability summation and regional variation in contrast sensitivity across the visual field. Vision Research 21 3 (1981) 409-418
110. Rosch E., Mervis C., Gray W., Johnson D., and Boyes-Braem P. Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 8 3 (1976) 382-439
111. Rovamo J., Franssila R., and Näsänen R. Contrast sensitivity as a function of spatial frequency, viewing distance and eccentricity with and without spatial noise. Vision Research 32 (1992) 631-637
112. Rovamo J., Virsu V., and Näsänen R. Cortical magnification factor predicts the photopic contrast sensitivity of peripheral vision. Nature 271 (1978) 54-56
113. Schultz D.W., and Eriksen C.W. Do noise masks terminate target processing?. Memory & Cognition 5 1 (1977) 90-96
114. Shiu L.-P., and Pashler H. Improvement in line orientation discrimination is retinally local but dependent on cognitive set. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 32 (1991) 1041
115. Simard P.Y., LeCun Y.A., Denker J.S., and Victorri B. Transformation invariance in pattern recognition-tangent distance and tangent propagation. International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology 11 3 (2001) 181-194
116. Smithson H., and Mollon J. Do masks terminate the icon?. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 59 1 (2006) 150-160
117. Solomon J.A., and Pelli D.G. The visual filter mediating letter identification. Nature 369 (1994) 395-397
118. Sperling G. The information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs 74 11, Whole No. 498 (1960) 1-29
119. Steingrimsson, R., Majaj, N. J., & Pelli, D. G. (2003). Where are letters processed and learned? Neural specialization for letter processing under different learning conditions. Perception, 32 supplement. Available from http://psych.nyu.edu/pelli/posters.html#2003.
120. Suchow, J. W., & Pelli, D. G. (2005). Learning to identify letters: generalization in high-level perceptual learning. Journal of Vision 5(8), 712a. Available from http://www.journalofvision.org/5/8/712/ [PDF].
121. Tanaka K., Saito H., Fukada Y., and Moriya M. Coding visual images of objects in the inferotemporal cortex of the macaque monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology 66 (1991) 170-189
122. Tanner Jr. W.P., and Birdsall T.G. Definitions of d′ and η as psychophysical measures. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 30 (1958) 922-928
123. Thomas J.P. Detection and identification: how are they related?. Journal of the Optical Society of America (A) 2 (1985) 1457-1467
124. Thompson DA.W. On growth and form (1917), Cambridge University Press
125. Thompson R.F., Berger T.W., and Madden J. Cellular processes of learning and memory in the mammalian CNS. Annual Review of Neuroscience 6 (1983) 447-491
126. Tjan B.S., Braje W.L., Legge G.E., and Kersten D.J. Human efficiency for recognizing 3-D objects in luminance noise. Vision Research 35 (1995) 3053-3070
127. Toet A., and Levi D.M. The two-dimensional shape of spatial interaction zones in the parafovea. Vision Research 32 (1992) 1349-1357
128. Townsend J.T. Theoretical analysis of the alphabetic confusion matrix. Perception & Psychophysics 9 (1971) 40-50
129. Townsend J.T. Alphabetic confusion: a test of models for individuals. Perception & Psychophysics 9 (1971) 449-454
130. Townsend J.T., and Ashby F.G. Experimental test of contemporary mathematical models of visual letter recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance 8 (1982) 834-854
131. Townsend J.T., Hu G.G., and Evans R.J. Modeling feature perception in brief displays with evidence for positive interdependencies. Perception & Psychophysics 36 (1984) 35-49
132. Ullman S. Aligning pictorial descriptions: an approach to object recognition. Cognition 32 (1989) 193-254
133. Ullman S. The visual analysis of shape and form. In: Gazzaniga M.S. (Ed). The cognitive neurosciences (1995), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 339-350
134. Valvo A. Sight restoration after long-term blindness: The problems and behavior patterns of visual rehabilitation (1971), American Foundation for the Blind, New York [The HS quote also appears in Wandell (1995,p. 390)
135. Van Trees H.L. Detection, estimation, and modulation theory (1968), Wiley, New York
136. Verghese P., and Pelli D.G. The information capacity of visual attention. Vision Research 32 (1992) 983-995
137. Wandell B.A. Foundations of vision (1995), Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA
138. Warrington E.K., and Shallice T. Word-form dyslexia. Brain 103 (1980) 99-112
139. Watson A.B. Probability summation over time. Vision Research 19 (1979) 515-522
140. Watson A.B., and Ahumada Jr. A.J. A standard model for foveal detection of spatial contrast. Journal of Vision 5 9 (2005) 717-740
141. Watson A.B., and Fitzhugh A.E. Modelling character legibility. Society for Information Display Digest of Technical Papers 20 (1989) 360-363
142. Watson A.B., and Pelli D.G. QUEST: a Bayesian adaptive psychometric method. Perception & Psychophysics 33 (1983) 113-120
143. Watson A.B., and Robson J.G. Discrimination at threshold: labelled detectors in human vision. Vision Research 21 (1981) 1115-1122
144. Watson A.B., Thompson P.G., Murphy B.J., and Nachmias J. Summation and discrimination of gratings moving in opposite directions. Vision Research 20 (1980) 341-347
145. Weinstein, M. (1955). Stimulus complexity and the recognition of visual patterns. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University.
146. Wertheimer M. Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, II. [Laws of organization in perceptual forms, translated in Ellis (1938)]. Psychologische Forschung 4 (1923) 301-350
147. Woodworth R.S. Experimental psychology (1938), Holt, New York
148. Wulf F. Über die Veränderung von Vorstellungen (Gedächtnis und Gestalt). Psychologische Forschung 1 (1922) 333-373 [Tendencies in figural variation, translated in Ellis (1938)]