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Description
Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD) is a cognitive phenomenon where human observers tend to overlook plants in complex scenarios, favoring animals and inanimate objects. Our study investigates whether this tendency extends to the numerical perception of plants compared to other elements. We conducted two behavioral experiments to test the hypothesis that plant numerosity is systematically underestimated. Participants evaluated groups of 7, 8, or 9 elements belonging to three categories: plants (trees), animals, and minerals. In the first experiment, subjects compared two sequential displays, one always containing plants and the other animals or minerals, indicating which contained more elements. In the second, they estimated the precise number of elements in a single display containing one of the three categories. Results confirm our hypothesis: plant numerosity is consistently underestimated. In the comparison experiment, accuracy was significantly higher only when plants were actually fewer in number. In the estimation experiment, the reported number of plants was systematically lower both compared to other categories and to the actual number presented.
These findings suggest that PAD not only influences plant perception in complex visual scenes but also impairs fundamental perceptual processes such as numerosity judgment. This broadens our understanding of PAD's impact on human cognition and highlights the importance of considering this bias in contexts beyond simple visual identification.
