Ensemble perception of colour

In order to rapidly get the gist of new scenes the brain must have mechanisms to process the large amount of visual information that enters the eye. Previous research has shown that observers can extract the average feature from briefly seen sets of multiple stimuli that vary along a certain dimension (e.g., size), a phenomenon called ensemble perception. This chapter summarizes the research that we have carried out investigating ensemble perception of hue. We have shown that observers can extract and estimate the mean hue of rapidly presented multi-colour ensembles. The ability to average hue may be driven by a subsampling mechanism (i.e. remembering just a few items), but results from autistic adults suggest that it can be modulated by local/global bias.