Previous studies reported that performance in texture segmentation was lower near the fovea than in the periphery. However, the exact cause of this phenomenon had been unknown. Experiment 1 replicated the central performance drop (CPD). Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that the previously reported CPD was due to a temporal factor, i.e. slower neural processing in central vision, rather than a spatial factor. But Experiments 4 and 5 showed that certain textures can lead to a purely spatial form of CPD due to inhibition and/or interference from high spatial frequency mechanisms in central vision. This study showed that, depending on textures, CPD can arise from either temporal or spatial causes.
Analysis of Variance Humans