Lateral masking

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Barcodes are difficult to process for the human mind because of lateral masking. UPC A.svg
Barcodes are difficult to process for the human mind because of lateral masking.

Lateral masking is a problem for the human visual perception of identical or similar entities in close proximity. This can be illustrated by the difficulty of counting the vertical bars of a barcode.

Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problem with visual perceptual processing even if he/she has 20/20 vision.

Barcode optical machine-readable representation of data

A barcode is a visual, machine-readable representation of data; the data usually describes something about the object that carries the barcode. Traditional barcodes systematically represent data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D). Later, two-dimensional (2D) variants were developed, using rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns, called matrix codes or 2D barcodes, although they do not use bars as such. Initially, barcodes were only scanned by special optical scanners called barcode readers. Later application software became available for devices that could read images, such as smartphones with cameras.

In linguistics lateral masking refers to the interference a letter has on its neighbor. [1] This is a problem readers encounter when reading a word. The identity of a letter in the middle of a word is obscured by the presence of its neighboring letters.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.

Letter (alphabet) grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing

A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing. It is a visual representation of the smallest unit of spoken sound. Letters broadly correspond to phonemes in the spoken form of the language, although there is rarely a consistent, exact correspondence between letters and phonemes.

Lateral masking may also be a problem in orthography design. A readable orthography will avoid situations in which a reader is faced with severe lateral masking.

An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

Notes

  1. Massaro, Dominic W. and Alexandra Jesse (2005): The Magic of Reading - Too many influences for quick and easy explanations. in: Richard L. Venezky, Tom Trabasso, John P. Sabatini, Dominic W. Massaro, Robert Calfee (eds.): From Orthography to Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of Richard L. Venezky. Routledge. ISBN   0-8058-5089-9

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