PSYCO367 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Green Paper, Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, Cerebral Achromatopsia
Document Summary
Colour serves important signalling functions both natural and contrived by humans. Colour perception greatly facilitates the ability to tell one object from another and especially to pick out objects within scenes. Tanaka and presnell: demonstrated that by asking observers to identify objects which appeared either in their normal colours, like yellow banana, or inappropriate colours like purple banana, observers recognized the appropriately coloured objects faster. Colours brown and purple, which are called extraspectral colours because they do not appear in the spectrum. People can discriminate between about 200 different colours across the length of the visible spectrum. We can create even more colours by changing the intensity to make colours brighter or dimmer, or by adding white to change colours saturation. Perception of colour is associated with the physical property of wavelength. Colours of objects are largely determined by the wavelengths of light that are reflected from the objects into our eyes.