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Is discrimination enhanced at the boundaries of perceptual categories? A negative case.


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Article

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Authors

Danilova, MV 
Mollon, JD 

Abstract

The human visual system imposes discrete perceptual categories on the continuous input space that is represented by the ratios of excitations of the cones in the retina. Is discrimination enhanced at the boundaries between perceptual hues, in the way that discrimination may be enhanced at the boundaries between speech sounds in hearing? In the chromaticity diagram, the locus of unique green separates colours that appear yellowish from those that appear bluish. Using a two-alternative spatial forced choice and an adapting field equivalent to the Daylight Illuminant D65, we measured chromatic discrimination along lines orthogonal to the locus of unique green. In experimental runs interleaved with these performance measurements, we obtained estimates of the phenomenological boundary from the same observers. No enhancement of objectively measured discrimination was observed at the category boundary between yellowish and bluish hues. Instead, thresholds were minimal at chromaticities where the ratio of long-wave to middle-wave cone excitation was the same as that for the background adapting field.

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Keywords

chromatic discrimination, colour vision, perceptual category, Color Perception, Discrimination, Psychological, Female, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Retinal Cone Photoreceptor Cells, Sensory Thresholds

Journal Title

Proc Biol Sci

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0962-8452
1471-2954

Volume Title

281

Publisher

The Royal Society

Rights

DSpace@Cambridge license
Sponsorship
The research was supported by Royal Society International Exchanges grant no. IE110252 and by Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant no. 12-04-01797.