Statistical Summary Perception in Vision

Abstract

In the last 15 years, significant efforts have been made to investigate statistical processing of object information. This includes computing properties such as mean or variance of features of multiple objects present in a visual display. Unlike visual search performance for individual objects, which is typically dependent on set size, mean estimation is usually not dependent on set size. The paper reviews studies on the nature of representations used in statistical processing and consolidation of the relevant information in working memory. The paper also discusses the different attributes such as orientation, size and emotions that have been studied in the context of estimating the mean of those attributes. One prominent question is the role of attention in statistical processing. While some argue that attention is not needed for statistical processing, others argue that attention or in some cases distributed attention is necessary for statistical processing. The paper critically evaluates the opposing views and also presents possible issues that need to be resolved in future.