Contribution of a common ability in average and variability judgments.

Abstract

People can make judgments about statistical properties of visual features within groups of objects, such as the average size, size variability, or numerosity of circles. Emerging from recent work is the view that these kinds of visual estimations, collectively dubbed ensemble perception, rely on independent abilities that are specific to the statistical property being estimated (mean, variance, range, numerosity). Here we revisit evidence for the claim that different statistical judgments (i.e., average and variability) for the same object feature are based on independent abilities. We tested a large sample of people, using a pre-registered open-ended sequential design to avoid ending up with weak evidence. We estimated the shared variance in ability across different ensemble judgments, with common constraints for the different tasks. We found that the abilities to judge the average size and the size variability for an array of circles are positively correlated, even after controlling for the ability to discriminate the size of single circles. Our results refute the idea that judgments of average and variability for the same object feature rely on completely independent abilities.