Numerosity and cumulative surface area are perceived holistically as integral dimensions.
Lauren S Aulet, Stella F. Lourenco
Abstract
. Whether assessed explicitly (Experiment 1) or implicitly (Experiment 2), perceived similarity for dot arrays that varied parametrically in number and cumulative area was best modeled by Euclidean, as opposed to city-block, distance within the stimulus space, comparable to other integral dimensions (brightness/saturation and radial frequency components) but different from separable dimensions (shape/color and brightness/size). Moreover, Euclidean distance remained the best-performing model, even when compared to models that controlled for other magnitude properties (e.g., density) or image similarity. These findings suggest that numerosity perception entails the obligatory processing of nonnumerical magnitude. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).