Experimental evidence tends to support the theory for low-level visual information, such as shapes and sizes, as well as some high-level features such as face gender.
Ensemble coding is a theory that suggests that people process the general gist of their complex visual surroundings by grouping objects together based on shared properties.
[3] It has been demonstrated that individuals have the ability to quickly and accurately encode ensembles of objects, like leaves on a tree, and gather summary statistical information (like the mean and variance) from groups of stimuli.
[9][10] Furthermore, scientists have found that this visual upper limit capacity exists across various phenomena including change blindness,[11][12] object tracking,[13] and feature representation.
[10] Additional theories in vision science propose that stimuli are represented in the brain individually as small, low resolution, icons stored in templates with limited capacities and are organized through associative links.
[17] Although Gestaltists helped define some of the central principles of object perception, research into modern ensemble coding did not occur until many years later.
[19] Additional research during this time explored ensemble coding in group attractiveness,[20] shopping preferences,[21] and the perceived badness of criminals.
[23] Consistent with Ariely's findings,[23] follow-up research conducted by Sang Chul Chong and Anne Treisman in 2003 provided evidence that participants are engaging in summary statistical processes.
For example, people accurately perceive the average size of objects,[24] motion direction of grouped dots,[31][32] number,[27] line orientation,[25] and spatial location.
[4] In 2023, researchers found that people can accurately gauge the average trustworthiness of multiple faces presented together, even at very brief exposure times (as short as 250 ms).
The findings suggest that our brains efficiently extract a summary statistic of facial features from crowds, enabling quick social judgments that may influence behavior.