Rapid Coding of Scene Features via Ensemble Statistical Processing

Ensemble perception utilizes patterns in our visual field to quickly and accurately process summary statistics for multiple types of information. Typically investigated used object and face ensembles, no known experiment has addressed the statistical coding of scene ensembles, despite a neuroanatomical link between scene and ensemble perception (Cant Xu, 2012). For this study, spatially derived scene ensembles were examined, and average scene features of content (measured by levels of perceived naturalness and manufacturedness) and spatial boundary (measured by how open or closed the scene ensemble appears) were rated. It was found that: a) average ratings given for a scene ensemble will be correlated with the average of the ratings given for the individual scenes comprising the ensemble, and b) scene ensemble ratings can occur both rapidly and accurately in a fraction of a second.M.A