Lateral masking: Limitations of the feature interaction account

Recognition performance for a target letter embedded in a string of charact ers is worse than that for targets presented in isolation. This lateral mas king (LM) effect is known to depend on target eccentricity and spacing betw een target and flankers (Bouma, 1970), indicating that LM arises in early v isual processing due to interactions among visual features. The feature int eraction account would predict that flankers consisting of similar features produce similar LM effects and that differences in LM produced by differen t types of flanker diminish with increasing target eccentricity and decreas ing spacing. However, in a series of six experiments, this prediction was s hown not to be true. Flankers that did not access a higher level code (e.g. , pseudoletters or rotated letters) produced more LM than standard letter f lankers. Moreover, effects of different flanker types were most pronounced for medium target eccentricities and medium spacings for which recognition performance scores ranged between 40% and 60%.