Similarly oriented objects appear more numerous

Several non-numerical factors influence the numerical estimation of visual arrays, including the spacing of items and whether they are arranged randomly or symmetrically. Here we report a novel numerosity illusion we term the coherence illusion. When items in an array have a coherent orientation (al...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of vision (Charlottesville, Va.) Vol. 20; no. 4; p. 4
Main Authors DeWind, Nicholas K, Bonner, Michael F, Brannon, Elizabeth M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology 09.04.2020
Subjects
Female
Humans
Illusions - physiology
Judgment
Male
Orientation, Spatial - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Several non-numerical factors influence the numerical estimation of visual arrays, including the spacing of items and whether they are arranged randomly or symmetrically. Here we report a novel numerosity illusion we term the coherence illusion. When items in an array have a coherent orientation (all pointing in the same direction) they seem to be more numerous than when items are oriented randomly. Participants show parametric effects of orientation coherence in three distinct numerical judgment tasks. These findings are not predicted by any current model of numerical estimation. We discuss array entropy as a possible framework for explaining both the coherence illusion and the previously reported regular-random illusion.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
Address: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Email: ndewind@gmail.com.
Corresponding author: Nicholas K. DeWind.
ISSN:1534-7362
1534-7362
DOI:10.1167/jov.20.4.4