Fig 1.
(a) Crowding: The perception of visual elements deteriorates in clutter, an effect called crowding. When fixating on the blue dots, the vernier (i.e., two vertical bars with a horizontal offset) becomes harder to perceive when it is flanked by a square. (b) Uncrowding: Results of a psychophysical experiment in which stimuli are presented in the visual periphery. The y-axis shows the minimal offset size at which observers can report the offset direction with 75% accuracy (i.e., lower values indicate better performance). The offset direction of a vernier in isolation can be easily reported (dashed red line). When a flanking square surrounds the vernier, performance deteriorates (crowding). When more squares are added, performance recovers (uncrowding). Critically, the uncrowding effect depends on the global stimulus configuration. For example, if some squares are replaced by stars, performance deteriorates again (3rd bar; [28]).