A quantitative model of ensemble perception as summed activation in feature space

Maria M. Robinson () and Timothy F. Brady ()
Additional contact information
Maria M. Robinson: University of California, San Diego
Timothy F. Brady: University of California, San Diego

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023, vol. 7, issue 10, 1638-1651

Abstract: Abstract Ensemble perception is a process by which we summarize complex scenes. Despite the importance of ensemble perception to everyday cognition, there are few computational models that provide a formal account of this process. Here we develop and test a model in which ensemble representations reflect the global sum of activation signals across all individual items. We leverage this set of minimal assumptions to formally connect a model of memory for individual items to ensembles. We compare our ensemble model against a set of alternative models in five experiments. Our approach uses performance on a visual memory task for individual items to generate zero-free-parameter predictions of interindividual and intraindividual differences in performance on an ensemble continuous-report task. Our top-down modelling approach formally unifies models of memory for individual items and ensembles and opens a venue for building and comparing models of distinct memory processes and representations.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01602-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:7:y:2023:i:10:d:10.1038_s41562-023-01602-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01602-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().