Aging and Visual Crowding

Scialfa, Charles T.; Cordazzo, Sheila Tatiana Duarte; Bubric, Katherine; Lyon, John

doi:10.1093/geronb/gbs086

Cited by 38 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…This result is consistent with previous studies on crowding in peripheral vision using resolution acuity 14,15 and surround suppression studies in central vision using contrast matching tasks 2 ; however, ours is the first direct measurement of crowding and suppression in the same older individuals and specifically using stimuli designed to allow such comparison across tasks. Our observed absence of a correlation between crowding and surround suppression is consistent with previous suggestions of distinct mechanisms underpinning these spatial visual phenomena.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…[11][12][13] Although many studies have shown age-related differences in spatial integration and suppression effects, the literature is less clear with respect to crowding. A study conducted by Scialfa et al 14 reported that older adults (n ¼ 25; mean age, 70.3 years; SD, 7.6 years) had elevated acuity thresholds for resolving the gap of a Landolt C at 68 eccentricity relative to younger adults (n ¼ 20; mean age, 20.6 years; SD, 1.9 years) in the presence of two flanking bars with the same luminance, size, and stroke width as the target in any given trial. However, the groups performed similarly once thresholds were expressed as a ratio of crowded threshold to uncrowded threshold.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Aging and Attention on Visual Crowding and Surround Suppression of Perceived Contrast Threshold

Malavita

Vidyasagar

McKendrick

2017

Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci.

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Citation: Malavita MS, Vidyasagar TR, McKendrick AM. The effect of aging and attention on visual crowding and surround suppression of perceived contrast threshold. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2017;58:860-867. DOI: 10.1167/iovs.16-20632 PURPOSE. The purpose of this study was to study how, in midperipheral vision, aging affects visual processes that interfere with target detection (crowding and surround suppression) and to determine whether the performance on such tasks are related to visuospatial attention as measured by visual search. METHODS.We investigated the effect of aging on crowding and suppression in detection of a target in peripheral vision, using different types of flanking stimuli. Both thresholds were also obtained while varying the position of the flanker (placed inside or outside of target, relative to fixation). Crowding thresholds were also estimated with spatial uncertainty (jitter). Additionally, we included a visual search task comprising Gabor stimuli to investigate whether performance is related to top-down attention. Twenty young adults (age, 18-32 years; mean age, 26.1 years; 10 males) and 19 older adults (age, 60-74 years; mean age, 70.3 years; 10 males) participated in the study. RESULTS.Older adults showed more surround suppression than the young (F[1,37] ¼ 4.21; P < 0.05), but crowding was unaffected by age. In the younger group, the position of the flanker influenced the strength of crowding, but not the strength of suppression (F[1,39] ¼ 4.11; P < 0.05). Crowding was not affected by spatial jitter of the stimuli. Neither crowding nor surround suppression was predicted by attentional efficiency measured in the visual search task. There was also no significant correlation between crowding and surround suppression.CONCLUSIONS. We show that aging does not affect visual crowding but does increase surround suppression of contrast, suggesting that crowding and surround suppression may be distinct visual phenomena. Furthermore, strengths of crowding and surround suppression did not correlate with each other nor could they be predicted by efficiency of visual search.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Aging and Attention on Visual Crowding and Surround Suppression of Perceived Contrast Threshold

Malavita

Vidyasagar

McKendrick

2017

Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci.

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“…The visual changes that occur naturally in older age lead to a reduction in sensitivity to visual detail and produce increased effects of visual crowding (McCarley et al, 2012;Scialfa et al, 2013; see also Owsley, 2011). As a consequence, older readers may be particularly reliant on coarse-scale cues to the location and physical extent of words in text, and their eye movement performance may be especially prone to the loss of these cues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These changes in visual abilities may also relate to increased effects of visual crowding on the perceptual abilities of older adults (McCarley, Yamani, Kramer, & Mounts, 2012;Scialfa, Cordazzo, Bubric, & Lyon, 2013), characterized by the reduced ability to recognize visual objects in clutter (Bouma, 1971; see also Pelli & Tillman, 2008). However, the precise effects of these changes on the reading ability of older adults have yet to be established.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and the use of interword spaces during reading: Evidence from eye movements

et al. 2013

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An eye movement experiment assessed the performance of young (18-30 years) and older (65+ years) adult readers when sentences contained conventional inter-word spaces, inter-word spaces were removed, or inter-word spaces were replaced by a non-linguistic symbol. The replacement symbol was either a closed square (■) that provided a salient (low spatial-frequency) cue to word boundaries, or an open square (□) that provided a less salient cue and included features (vertical and horizontal lines) similar to those found in letters. Removing or replacing inter-word spaces slowed reading times and impaired normal eye movement behavior for both age groups. However, this disruption was greater for the older readers, particularly when the replacement symbol did not provide a salient cue to word boundaries. Specific influences of this manipulation on word identification during reading were assessed by examining eye movements for a high or low frequency target word in each sentence. Standard word frequency effects were obtained for both age groups when text was spaced normally, and although the word frequency effect was larger when spaces were removed or filled, this increase was similar across age groups. Therefore, while older adults' normal eye movements were substantially disrupted when text lacked conventional interword spaces, the process of lexical access associated with the word frequency effect was no more difficult for older adults than young adults. The indication, therefore, is that although older adults struggle with the loss of conventional cues to word boundaries, this is not due to additional difficulties in word recognition.

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“…This includes a progressive loss of sensitivity to visual detail (e.g., Crassini, Brown, & Bowman, 1988;Elliott, Yang, & Whitaker, 1995;Owsley, Sekuler, Siemsen, 1983), which has been shown previously to affect normal reading performance for alphabetic languages Paterson, McGowan & Jordan, 2013a,b). In addition, older adults typically experience increased effects of visual crowding (McCarley, Yamani, Kramer, & Mounts, 2012;Scialfa, Cordazzo, Bubric, & Lyon, 2013), characterised by reduced ability to recognise visual objects in clutter, especially in peripheral vision (Bouma, 1971; see also Pelli & Tillman, 2008). In A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t…”

Section: Eye Movements and Ageing In Chinese Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

Zang

Zhang

Bai

et al. 2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.

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Aging and Visual Crowding

Cited by 38 publications

References 30 publications

The Effect of Aging and Attention on Visual Crowding and Surround Suppression of Perceived Contrast Threshold

The Effect of Aging and Attention on Visual Crowding and Surround Suppression of Perceived Contrast Threshold

Aging and the use of interword spaces during reading: Evidence from eye movements

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

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