Visual backward masking is a versatile tool for understanding principles and limitations of visual information processing in the human brain. However, the mechanisms underlying masking are still poorly understood. In the current contribution, the authors show that a structurally simple mathematical model can explain many spatial and temporal effects in visual masking, such as spatial layout eff...

Visual masking is a frequently used tool in schizophrenia research. Visual masking has a very high sensitivity and specificity and masking paradigms have been proven to be endophenotypes. Whereas masking is a powerful technique to study schizophrenia, the underlying mechanisms are discussed controversially. For example, for more than 25 years, masking deficits of schizophrenia patients were mai...

Fault masking can reduce the effectiveness of a test suite. We propose an information theoretic measure, Squeeziness, as the theoretical basis for avoiding fault masking. We begin by explaining fault masking and the relationship between collisions and fault masking. We then define Squeeziness and demonstrate by experiment that there is a strong correlation between Squeeziness and the likelihood...

It is important for critical applications to provide critical services without any integrity or availability degradation in the presence of intrusions. This requirement can be satisfied by intrusion masking techniques under some situations. Compared with intrusion tolerance techniques, where some integrity or availability degradations are usually caused, intrusion masking techniques use substan...

Four-dot masking is a new form of visual masking that does not involve local contour interactions or spatial superimposition of the target stimulus and the mask (as, e.g., in pattern or metacontrast masking). Rather, the effective masking mechanism is based on object substitution. Object substitution masking occurs when low-level visual information representations are altered before target iden...

Masking is the central topic of this thesis based on publications. Masking is a technique that allows the secure execution of cryptographic algorithms in untrusted environments. More concretely, masking provides security guarantees even if an adversary observes side-channel leakage. We first propose a methodology to attack masked implementations more quickly. Our method is relevant in practice ...

After more than a century of research, the mechanisms underlying visual masking are still hotly debated. One key characteristic of masking is that variations in the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the target and the mask can lead to either monotonic reductions in the effect of the mask on the target (A-type masking) or an increase in masking for intermediate SOAs and then a decrease in ...

In the present article, we investigated whether higher order image statistics, which are known to be carried by the Fourier phase spectrum, are sufficient to affect scene gist recognition. In Experiment 1, we compared the scene gist masking strength of four masking image types that varied in their degrees of second- and higher order relationships: normal scene images, scene textures, phase-rand...

Schizophrenic patients consistently demonstrate performance deficits on visual masking procedures. In visual masking, the subject's ability to process a target stimulus is reduced by another stimulus (mask) presented either before (forward masking) or after (backward masking) the target. Masking procedures employed in schizophrenia research have used several experimental paradigms. Most early s...

The tinnitus masking test, in which the minimum masking levels of tinnitus by various pure tones and band noises are measured and used to produce tinnitus masking curves, is one of the methods for evaluating the character of tinnitus. At present, the tinnitus masking test is usually performed using a pure tone audiometer. In this study, tinnitus masking curves were produced using a self-recordi...