The Influence of Pupil Responses on Subjective Brightness Perception
1 The influence of pupil responses on subjective brightness perception I. K. Wardhania, b, C. N. Boehlera, and S. Mathôtb, ∗ aDepartment of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium bDepartment of Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, the Netherlands Abstract When the pupil dilates, the amount of light that falls onto the retina increases as well. However, in daily life, this does not make the world look brighter. Here we asked whether pupil size (resulting from active pupil movement) influences subjective brightness in the absence of indirect cues that, in daily life, support brightness constancy. We measured the subjective brightness of a tester stimulus relative to a referent as a function of pupil size during tester presentation. In Ex- periment 1, we manipulated pupil size through a secondary working-memory task (larger pupils with higher load and after errors). We found some evidence that the tester was perceived as darker, rather than brighter, when pupils were lar- ger. In Experiment 2, we presented a red or blue display (larger pupils following red displays). We again found that the tester was perceived as darker when pu- pils were larger. We speculate that the visual system takes pupil size into account when making brightness judgments. Finally, we highlight the challenges associ- ated with manipulating pupil size. In summary, the current study (as well as a recent pharmacological study on the same topic) are intriguing first steps towards understanding the role of pupil size in brightness perception. Keywords: pupillometry, pupil light reflex, psychosensory pupil reflex, pupil size, luminance, subjective brightness perception ∗Corresponding author.
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