Peripheral Vision: A Critical Component of Many Visual Tasks

In understanding human visual perception, an important component consists of what people can perceive at a glance. If that glance provides the observer with sufficient task-relevant information, this affords efficient processing. If not, one must move one’s eyes and integrate information across glances and over time, which is necessarily slower and limited by both working memory and the ability to integrate that information. Vision at a glance has to do in large part with the strengths and limitations of peripheral vision, and in particular with visual crowding. Understanding peripheral vision has helped unify a number of aspects of vision.