The location of noisy visual stimuli.

Examined the results of experiments where Ss were required to detect the misalignment of 2 abutting dot clusters on a monitor screen. Thresholds varied with the square root of dot density and did not appear to be affected by changing the sampling strategy used to generate the random dot clusters. Comparison of the Ss' performance with that expected of 3 information processing strategies suggested that Ss accomplished the task by locating the edges of the dot clusters rather than by extracting measures of global scope or of central position. The efficiency with which edge information was extracted was approximately 50% for low-density stimuli and declined exponentially with increasing dot density. (French abstract) (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)