Contextual coherence increases perceived numerosity independent of semantic content

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Number perception relies on hierarchical visual processing.
• Low-level visual attribute coherence impacts perceived number.
• The role of higher-level coherence in numerosity perception is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate when visual coherence affects numerosity perception in the processing hierarchy.
• Determine if coherence effects are limited to low-level features or extend to contextual/semantic relationships.
• Explore the influence of statistical object co-occurrence on perceived number.

Main Methods:

• Adults performed an ordinal numerical comparison task.
• Contextual coherence was manipulated using statistical models of visual object co-occurrence.
• Experiments used texforms and image manipulations (scrambling, warping) to isolate feature levels.

Main Results:

• Higher contextual coherence led to perception of larger numerical quantities.
• This effect persisted even with unrecognizable images (texforms) and removed semantic content.
• Coherence derived from natural statistics impacts numerosity perception early in visual processing.

Conclusions:

• Contextual coherence, driven by natural statistics, influences numerosity perception.
• This effect occurs at low-level visual processing stages, prior to explicit object recognition.
• Visual coherence is a fundamental factor in the early stages of number sense development.