PSY 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Trichromacy, Color Vision, Color Blindness
Document Summary
Human beings are capable of responding to changes in light conditions. As already mentioned, rods are mainly involved in our ability to see in dim light. These are the photoreceptors that are responsible for letting us see in a darkroom. You may note that it takes about 10 minutes to turn on this night vision feature, a process called dark adaptation. This is because, under normal light conditions, our rods are bleached and require time to recover. As we leave a dark movie theater, we feel the opposite effect and head out into the afternoon sun. A large number of rods and cones are bleached at once during light adaptation which causes us to be blinded for a few seconds. Compared with dark adaptation, light adaptation occurs almost instantaneously. It is interesting to note that some people think pirates wear a mask over one eye to hold adapted to the dark while the other was adapted to the light.
