Representing Variability: How Do We Process the Heterogeneity in the Visual Environment?

The visual world is full of detail. This Element focuses on this variability in perception, asking how it affects performance in visual tasks and how the variability is represented by human observers. The authors highlight different methods for assessing representations of variability and suggest that understanding visual variability can be elusive when straightforward explicit methods are used, while more implicit methods may be better suited to uncovering such processing. The authors conclude that variability is represented in far more detail than previously thought and that this aspect of perception is vital for understanding the complexity of visual consciousness.