Vision senses number directly

We have recently suggested that numerosity is a primary sensory attribute, and shown that it is strongly susceptible to adaptation. Here we use the Method of Single Stimuli to show that observers can extract a running average of numerosity of a succession of stimuli to use as a standard of comparison for subsequent stimuli. On separate sessions observers judged whether the perceived numerosity or density of a particular trial was greater or less than the average of previous stimuli. Thresholds were as precise for this task as for explicit comparisons of test with standard stimuli. Importantly, we found no evidence that numerosity judgments are mediated by density. Under all conditions, judgements of numerosity were as precise as those of density. Thresholds in intermingled conditions, where numerosity varied unpredictably with density, were as precise as the blocked thresholds. Judgments in constant-density conditions were more precise thresholds than those in variable-density conditions, and numerosity judgements in conditions of constant-numerosity showed no tendency to follow density. We further report the novel finding that perceived numerosity increases with decreasing luminance, whereas texture density does not, further evidence for independent processing of the two attributes. All these measurements suggest that numerosity judgments can be, and are, made independently of judgments of the density of texture.