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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 7, 2026

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

Published on: March 1, 2022

Subjective randomness and natural scene statistics.

Anne S Hsu¹, Thomas L Griffiths, Ethan Schreiber

¹University College London, London, England.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|November 2, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People perceive visual patterns as random when they cannot detect underlying regularities. This study found that the less frequently a pattern appears in nature, the more random people perceive it to be.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Environmental Perception
Visual Perception

Background:

Subjective randomness is often defined by the inability to detect structural regularities.
The human visual system may be attuned to statistical regularities present in the natural environment.
Understanding how environmental statistics influence perception is crucial for cognitive science.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if the statistical properties of natural scenes influence human perception of randomness.
To test the hypothesis that perceived randomness is inversely related to the natural scene probability of a visual pattern.
To explore the link between environmental statistics and subjective judgments of randomness.

Main Methods:

Quantified the natural scene probabilities of two-dimensional binary array patterns.
Collected human judgments on the perceived randomness of these binary array patterns.
Analyzed the relationship between natural scene probabilities and perceived randomness.

Main Results:

A significant inverse relationship was observed between pattern probability in nature and perceived randomness.
Patterns with lower natural scene probabilities were judged as more random by participants.
This suggests that familiarity with environmental patterns shapes our perception of randomness.

Conclusions:

Perception of randomness is not purely intrinsic to a pattern but is influenced by exposure to natural environmental statistics.
The human brain appears to use learned environmental regularities to assess the randomness of visual stimuli.
This finding has implications for understanding visual processing and pattern recognition in ecological contexts.