People are able to rapidly extract summary statistical information about common patterns, or ensembles, that may exist in a scene, such as repeated textures or colors. Here we examined the extent to which such an ensemble perception can occur in the absence of focal visual attention using a method that has some advantages over methods previously used to study the issue. In particular, we assessed the extent to which ensembles can be processed without attention by measuring the indirect effect of a to-be-ignored ensemble on judgments of an attended ensemble. The results show that ensembles outside the focus of attention do influence judgments of attended ensembles when the to-be-ignored ensemble contains summary statistics that match a sought-for target category. Thus, an attentional control setting for specific summary statistical information permits the processing of ensembles outside of focal attention, facilitating the rapid perception of visual scenes.

人们能够快速提取有关场景中可能存在的常见图案或合奏的摘要统计信息，例如重复的纹理或颜色。在这里，我们使用一种比以前用于研究该问题的方法具有某些优势的方法，检查了在没有集中视觉注意的情况下，这种整体感知可以发生的程度。特别地，我们通过测量一个被忽略的合奏对有人参与的合奏的判断的间接影响，来评估合奏可以在不引起注意的情况下进行处理的程度。结果表明，当注意力不集中的合奏包含与所需目标类别匹配的摘要统计信息时，在关注焦点之外的合奏确实会影响到所参与的合奏的判断。从而，