Chromatic Fading Following Complete Adaptation to Unique Hues Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto Rytis Stanikunas 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania

Journal of Vision (2020) 20(6):20, 1–15 1

Chromatic fading following complete adaptation to unique hues Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto Rytis Stanikunas 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania

Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto Vaiva Kulbokaite 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania

Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto Algimantas Svegzda 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania

Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto Henrikas Vaitkevicius 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania

Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Universiteto 9/1, Vilnius, Lithuania Vytautas Magnus University, K. Donelaicioˇ g. 58, Kaunas, Ausra Daugirdiene Lithuania

Vision Sciences Lab Faculty of Biology Medicine and Janus J. Kulikowski Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Vision Sciences Lab Faculty of Biology Medicine and Ian J. Murray Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Profound vision loss occurs after prolonged exposure to The experiments show that the special case of visual an unchanging featureless visual environment. The fade involving color represents the sensory basis for effect is sometimes called visual fade.Herewe many color-related effects involving adaptation. investigate this phenomenon in the color domain using two different experiments. In the first experiment we determine the time needed for a colored background to appear achromatic. Four backgrounds were tested. Each Introduction represented the observers’ four unique hues. This adaptation time was compared with time to recover It has been known for many years that perceptual after adaptation Hue shifts at the end of the adaptation fade of color and brightness occurs when observers period were also measured. There were wide individual are exposed to an expansive colored field that is differences in adaptation times and recovery times. p < otherwise featureless. A particularly dramatic version Overall recovery was faster than adaptation ( 0.02). of the phenomenon occurs when the retinal image There were minimal shifts in hue. In the second is artificially stabilized. This technique, attributed to experiment the changes in saturation (Munsell chroma) Ditchburn & Ginsborg (1952) and Yarbus (1967), and lightness (Munsell value) of the background were monitored at six time intervals during the adapting showed that the gradual fading of perception proceeds process. Again asymmetric matching with Munsell in stages, with contours disappearing first, then samples was used. There were two distinct components color, and then brightness (Gerrits & Vendrik, 1970). to both the adaptation and recovery phases; one fast Interesting examples were provided by Simons, Lleras, with time constant <1s, the other slow with time Martinez-Conde, Slichter, Caddigan, and Nevarez constant between 40 and 160s. (2006), who presented low-pass filtered photographs

Citation: Stanikunas, R., Kulbokaite, V., Svegzda, A., Vaitkevicius, H., Daugirdiene, A., Kulikowski, J. J., & Murray, I. J. (2020). Chromatic fading following complete adaptation to unique hues. Journal of Vision, 20(6):20, 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.6.20.

Downloaded from jov.arvojournals.orgThis work ison licensed 09/27/2021 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Journal of Vision (2020) 20(6):20, 1–15 Stanikunas et al. 2

and instructed their subjects to fixate carefully. They becomes achromatic and perceived brightness gradually referred to their effect as “scene fading.” Total fading decreases. In the historical literature there was much for brightness takes some time, up to several minutes discussion about the rate of disappearance of the color in some cases, although t