Cargando…

The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention

Most people are good at estimating summary statistics for different features of groups of objects. For instance, people can selectively attend to different features of a group of lines and report ensemble properties such as the mean length or mean orientation and there are reliable individual differ...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kacin, Melanie, Cha, Oakyoon, Gauthier, Isabel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9844274/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36649050
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vision7010003
_version_ 1784870610788155392
author Kacin, Melanie
Cha, Oakyoon
Gauthier, Isabel
author_facet Kacin, Melanie
Cha, Oakyoon
Gauthier, Isabel
author_sort Kacin, Melanie
collection PubMed
description Most people are good at estimating summary statistics for different features of groups of objects. For instance, people can selectively attend to different features of a group of lines and report ensemble properties such as the mean length or mean orientation and there are reliable individual differences in such ensemble judgment abilities. Our recent study found decisive evidence in support of a correlation between the errors on mean length and mean orientation judgments (r = 0.62). The present study investigates one possible mechanism for this correlation. The ability to allocate spatial attention to single items varies across individuals, and in the recent study, this variability could have contributed to both judgments because the location of lines was unpredictable. Here, we replicate this prior work with arrays of lines with fully predictable spatial locations, to lower the contribution of the ability to distribute attention effectively over all items in a display. We observed a strong positive correlation between errors on the length and orientation averaging tasks (r = 0.65). This provides evidence against individual differences in spatial attention as a common mechanism supporting mean length and orientation judgments. The present result aligns with the growing evidence for at least one ensemble-specific ability that applies across different kinds of features and stimuli.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9844274
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-98442742023-01-18 The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention Kacin, Melanie Cha, Oakyoon Gauthier, Isabel Vision (Basel) Article Most people are good at estimating summary statistics for different features of groups of objects. For instance, people can selectively attend to different features of a group of lines and report ensemble properties such as the mean length or mean orientation and there are reliable individual differences in such ensemble judgment abilities. Our recent study found decisive evidence in support of a correlation between the errors on mean length and mean orientation judgments (r = 0.62). The present study investigates one possible mechanism for this correlation. The ability to allocate spatial attention to single items varies across individuals, and in the recent study, this variability could have contributed to both judgments because the location of lines was unpredictable. Here, we replicate this prior work with arrays of lines with fully predictable spatial locations, to lower the contribution of the ability to distribute attention effectively over all items in a display. We observed a strong positive correlation between errors on the length and orientation averaging tasks (r = 0.65). This provides evidence against individual differences in spatial attention as a common mechanism supporting mean length and orientation judgments. The present result aligns with the growing evidence for at least one ensemble-specific ability that applies across different kinds of features and stimuli. MDPI 2022-12-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9844274/ /pubmed/36649050 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vision7010003 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Kacin, Melanie
Cha, Oakyoon
Gauthier, Isabel
The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title_full The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title_fullStr The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title_full_unstemmed The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title_short The Relation between Ensemble Coding of Length and Orientation Does Not Depend on Spatial Attention
title_sort relation between ensemble coding of length and orientation does not depend on spatial attention
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9844274/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36649050
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vision7010003
work_keys_str_mv AT kacinmelanie therelationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention
AT chaoakyoon therelationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention
AT gauthierisabel therelationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention
AT kacinmelanie relationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention
AT chaoakyoon relationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention
AT gauthierisabel relationbetweenensemblecodingoflengthandorientationdoesnotdependonspatialattention