The Efficiency of Feature-Based Subitization and Counting

The enumeration of small numbers of objects (∼4) proceeds rapidly, accurately, and with little effort via a process termed subitization . Four experiments examined whether it was possible to subitize the number of features rather than objects present in a display. Overall, the findings showed that when features are presented randomly and are uncorrelated with object numerosity, efficient enumeration is not possible. This suggests that the visual system does not have parallel access to multiple feature maps and that subitization processes operate exclusively on representations coding the locations of objects. The data are discussed with respect to theories of visual enumeration and search.