Two studies were conducted to investigate changes which take place in
the visual information processing of novel stimuli as they become fami
liar. Japanese writing characters (Hiragana and Kanji) which were unfa
miliar to two native English speaking subjects were presented using a
moving window technique to restrict their visual fields. Study time fo
r visual recognition was recorded across repeated sessions, and with v
arying visual field restrictions. The critical visual field was define
d as the size of the visual field beyond which further increases did n
ot improve the speed of recognition performance. In the first study, w
hen the Hiragana patterns were novel, subjects needed to see about hal
f of the entire pattern simultaneously to maintain optimal performance
. However, the critical visual field size decreased as familiarity wit
h the patterns increased. These results were replicated in the second
study with more complex Kanji characters. In addition, the critical fi
eld size decreased as pattern complexity decreased. We propose a three
component model of pattern perception. In the first stage a represent
ation of the stimulus must be constructed by the subject, and restrict
ing of the visual field interferes dramatically with this component wh
en stimuli are unfamiliar. With increased familiarity, subjects become
able to reconstruct a previous representation from very small, unique
segments of the pattern, analogous to the informativeness areas hypot
hesized by Loftus and Mackworth [J. Exp. Psychol., 4 (1978) 565].