Importantly, statistical summaries can be generated very rapidly before the visual system has time to localize or discriminate any particular individual item in the scene (Ariely,
2001; Haberman & Whitney,
2007,
2011). As such, ensemble codes are functionally very useful. Observers may achieve an accurate ensemble percept while distracted by another task (Alvarez & Oliva,
2008). Similarly, observers can effectively ensemble code while experiencing change blindness (Haberman & Whitney,
2011) or while experiencing visual crowding (Fischer & Whitney,
2011). Even individuals with neurological impairments, such as prosopagnosia or unilateral neglect, may gain access to useful ensemble information although discrimination of individual faces/objects is impaired (Demeyere, Rzeskiewicz, Humphreys, & Humphreys,
2008; Pavlovskaya, Bonneh, Soroker, & Hochstein,
2010; Yamanashi Leib, Landau, Baek, & Chong,
2012; Yamanashi Leib, Puri, et al.,
2012). Because ensemble information is achieved so rapidly and is unhindered by many perceptual limitations, it is theorized that ensemble percepts contribute significantly to our perceptual awareness of the world, including the updating of visual working memory (Brady & Alvarez,
2011), guiding attention (Alvarez,
2011), outlier detection (Haberman & Whitney,
2010,
2012), and hierarchical organization in scene perception (Alvarez,
2011).