Getting the gist of multiple hues: metric and categorical effects on ensemble perception of hue.

This study investigated the perception of colorful ensembles and the effect of categories and perceptual similarity on their representation. We briefly presented ensembles of two hues and tested hue recognition with a range of seen and unseen hues. The average hue was familiar, even though it never appeared in the ensembles. Increasing the perceptual difference of ensemble hues inhibited this mean bias, and the categorical relationship of hues also affected the distribution of familiarity. The findings suggest there is an ensemble perception of hue, but this is affected by the categorical and metric relationships of the elements in the ensemble.