Abstract
Previous research has claimed that human observers perceive color “cost-free” outside focal attention (Bronfman et al., Psychological Science, 2014). Specifically, it has been shown that if observers are cued in advance to report a specific row from a briefly-presented 4x6 grid of colored letters, they can report color variability (a summary statistic) for both cued and non-cued rows of letters without impairments to working memory performance. In this study, we asked a simple question: does this “cost-free” phenomenon for color variability perception extend across the visual field? First, we replicated these findings using a standard 4x6 letter grid, presented in foveal and perifoveal regions of space. Next, in our second experiment, we modified the letter grid to probe peripheral vision, using a ring of letters to investigate if attending to one quadrant of the ring impacted color variability reports for the other three sections of the circle. Our results showed that while color variability performance for the cued region remained at similar levels to Experiment 1, color variability perception for non-cued rows decreased significantly, but remained above chance-level performance. Moreover, working memory performance for letters in the cued row decreased when color variability reports for non-cued rows were required. These results support three conclusions: (1) color variability perception is not “cost-free” in peripheral vision, as spatial attention to one region results in deficits in reporting this summary statistic in other regions; (2) color variability performance decreases in peripheral vision but remains above chance, indicating that minimally-attended peripheral regions retain some capacity for color perception; (3) tradeoffs exist between working memory performance and the capacity to report color variability in minimally-attended regions of space. These results provide important evidence for current debates on richness of peripheral vision, and support the idea that summary statistical perception may require attentional resources.