The interplay between spatial and non-spatial grouping cues over approximate number perception

Abstract

Humans and animals share the cognitive ability to quickly extract approximate number information from sets. Main psychophysical models suggest that visual approximate numerosity relies on segmented units, which can be affected by Gestalt rules. Indeed, arrays containing spatial grouping cues, such as connectedness, closure, and even symmetry, are underestimated compared to ungrouped arrays with equal low-level features. Recent evidence suggests that non-spatial cues, such as color-similarity, also trigger numerosity underestimation. However, in natural vision, several grouping cues may coexist in the scene. Notably, conjunction of grouping cues (color and closure) reduces perceived numerosity following an additive rule. To test whether the conjunction-effect holds for other Gestalt cues, we investigated the effect of connectedness and symmetry over numerosity perception both in isolation and, critically, in conjunction with luminance similarity. Participants performed a comparison-task between a reference and a test stimulus varying in numerosity. In Experiment 1, test stimuli contained two isolated groupings (connectedness or luminance), a conjunction (connectedness and luminance), and a neutral condition (no groupings). Results show that point of subjective equality was higher in both isolated grouping conditions compared to the neutral condition. Furthermore, in the conjunction condition, the biases from isolated grouping cues added linearly, resulting in a numerosity underestimation equal to the sum of the isolated biases. In Experiment 2 we found that conjunction of symmetry and luminance followed the same additive rule. These findings strongly suggest that both spatial and non-spatial isolated cues affect numerosity perception. Crucially, we show that their conjunction effect extends to symmetry and connectedness.