Spacing, not size of letters, matters when it comes to reading from a distance | Detroit Star

Spacing, not size of letters, matters when it comes to reading from a distance

Detroit Star (ANI) Friday 26th September, 2008

Washington, Sept 26 : It's not the size of the letters, but spacing between them, which makes it hard for us to read a book from a distance, according to New York University neuroscientists.

The same applies to objects, including letters, animals, and furniture, which can only be recognized only if they are separated by enough space, the "critical spacing." Objects closer than that spacing are "crowded" and cannot be identified.

The critical spacing is a key parameter in the brain's cortical architecture underlying object recognition, said authors, NYU Professor of Psychology and Neural Science Denis Pelli and Katharine Tillman, an undergraduate researcher in NYU's College of Arts and Science.

"The idea that spacing limits object recognition could not be simpler, but it has been very hard to accept because it displaces a firmly held belief that visibility is limited by size, not spacing," wrote Pelli and Tillman.

The human visual system recognizes a simple object by detecting and then combining its features (lines or edges). But this process is hampered when, in seeking to identify an object in clutter, your brain combines features over too large an area surrounding the object, failing to isolate the object's features from those of the clutter.

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