Perceiving the mean?
Summary
This paper investigated the relationship between ensemble coding, the ability of humans to readily report average parameters such as average colour, speed, orientation or emotion and spatial frequency defined by luminance variations cycling over different amounts of space. Some research regarding ensemble coding differentiates between low- and high-level ensemble coding, low-level ensemble coding being based on low-level features such as size, colour or spatial frequency and high-level ensemble coding being more holistic and research concerning this is primarily based on faces. However, as recent advancements in science have discovered that spatial frequency influences face perception it might be that high-level ensembles are actually ensembles based on the low-level feature spatial frequency. The analysis showed an ensemble coding effect but yielded inconclusive results regarding whether spatial frequency influenced this ensemble coding. This leads to the conclusion that high-level ensemble coding probably has a basis in holistic stimuli.