Object Substitution: A New Form of Masking in Unattended Visual Locations

Can four dots that surround, but do not touch, a target shape act as a mask to reduce target discriminability? Although existing theories of metacontrast and pattern masking say “no,” we report this occurs when targets appear in unpredictable locations. In three experiments, a four-dot mask was compared with a standard metacontrast mask that surrounded the target. Although accuracy was predictably different for the two masks at a central display location in Experiment I, both masks had similar strong effects on accuracy in parafoveal locations. Experiment 2 revealed that both four-dot and metacontrast masking were insensitive to contour proximity in parafoveal display locations, and Experiment 3 showed that four-dot masking could occur even at a central location if attention was distributed among several targets. We propose that targets in unattended locations are coded with low spotiotemporal resolution, leaving them vulnerable to substitution by the four dots when attention is directed to them.