Effect Of Variance And Attention On Ensemble Perception Of Different Stimuli Levels

The ensemble perception refers to the ability of an individual to quickly perceive the overall characteristics in the face of a similar set of stimuli with statistically distributed information.Previous studies have found that stimuli variance and attention state are two major factors that affect the ensemble perception efficiency.However,in the past,the study of ensemble perception mainly focused on the stimuli presented by spatial distribution,while the stimuli presented in time series may be different from the stimuli presented in spatial distribution.Therefore,it is necessary to examine the ensemble perceptual characteristics of the former.In addition,the current research on the internal mechanism of ensemble perception is still controversial,and the influence of many factors on the ensemble perception needs to be further verified.In view of this,the study will examine whether an individual has an ensemble perception of the stimuli presented in a time series,and the effects of stimuli variance,attention states,and stimuli types on ensemble perception.More specifically,this study used the rapid sequence visual presentation(RSVP)adaptation paradigm to explore the effects of stimuli variance and attention state(central/peripheral attention)on the ensemble perception of different levels of stimulii through four experiments.Among them,the experiment 1 compared the difference between the orientation perception of single stimulus and the ensemble orientation perception of the sequence stimuli(adapted aftereffect),and examined the effect of the adaptation time.The results showed that individuals also have a clear ensemble perception in time series,which was similar to the results of previous study that stimuli presented in spatial distribution.In the second experiment,in the context of controlling the adaptive time effect,the effects of stimuli variance and the number of adaptive stimuli on the ensemble perception were investigated to further explore the ensemble perceptual characteristics over time.The results showed that the greater the variance,the lower the efficiency toward the ensemble perception,which is similar to the experimental results of the previous spatial ensemble perception study;the number of adaptive stimuli has no effect on the integration efficiency of RSVP.Experiment 3 further explored the effect of central/peripheral attention on the ensemble perception and examined the effect of the ensemble orientation intensity.The results showed that the ensemble perception under the central attention condition is better than the peripheral attention condition;the ensemble orientation intensity has no effect on the ensemble perception efficiency.The stimuli in the above three experiments were low-level materials,and the fourth experiment used facial expressions to explore the influence of central/peripheral attention on the ensemble perception of high-level stimuli,and examined the effects of different ensemble expression intensity.The results showed that in high expression intensity,the central/peripheral attention affects the ensemble perception of the expression,but there is no similar effect in the low expression intensity situation,which is significantly different from the experimental results of the low level of orientation stimuli.The conclusion of this study is that individuals also have significant ensemble perceptual processing for stimuli presented in time series.This processing is affected by stimuli variance,but is not affected by the number of stimuli.In addition,the central/peripheral attentional regulation has different effects on the ensemble perception of different levels of stimuli,and the results support a domain-specific view of the ensemble perceptual mechanism.