GEK1532 Binocular Vision Color and linguistics

Thorsten Wohland Dep. Of Chemistry S8-03-06 Tel.: 6516 1248 E-mail: chmwt@nus.edu.sg

J. DAVIDOFF, I. DAVIES & D. ROBERSON

Nature 398, 203 - 204 (1999);

Hue discrimination and cancellation, Problems of Tristimulus Theory

STL, Fig. 10.9 STL, Fig. 10.4

STL, Fig. 10.10

Cone signal combinations

S M + L S L M

M +

Yellow

Blue - Yellow

Perceived Brightness

Red-Green

Double opponency
Opponency of location (inside versus outside)
One ganglion cell receives signal from many receptors, excitatory or inhibitory signals.

Opponency of color

The combination of both gives double opponency

Revision: Spatial Processing of Color

0 0+ 0 0

00 0 STL, Fig. 10.16

Negative after images

rest excitation Inhibition or desensitization STL Fig. 7.12 Inhibition: If an excited cone, i.e. a cone that has absorbed light suppresses signaling, it is called inhibition. The result is a lower frequency of firing of the ganglion cell. Desensitization: After strong excitation a cone can become less sensitive and cannot react again immediately. In this case there could be as well less firing from this cone.

Negative after images

Cones rest S excitation Inhibition or desensitization STL Fig. 7.12 M L Long exposure to white light

No image

Long exposure of some cones, image is seen

The exposed cones are desensitized, give lower signal than surrounding rested cones.

Temporal Processing
Benham disk: White parts excite all three cones. However, the three cones recover from activation differently. When black falls onto the excited cones, some are still stimulated (e.g. the blue one) while others (red and green) have already recovered. Thus one sees blue.

STL, Fig. 10.19

Temporal Processing

STL, Fig. 10.21

Benham disk, positive afterimages

Return to resting state afetr blue cone has deexcited as well

Cones No excitation, no color perception

Flash of white light All cone excited, white is seen Red cone de-excites fast, a blue/green (cyan) color is seen Green cone de-excites next. Blue is seen

Binocular Vision
Binocular vision gives an animal several advantages: 1. It provides a spare eye. 2. It provides a wider field of view.

3. It provides 3D vision by stereoscopic vision.

Binocular Vision
1. Adaptation

Object x 2 f Object x 2 f Object x 2 f x f x f x f x f 2 x f Image x 2 Imagef x f x f 2 x f Image

Binocular Vision
2. Convergence

STL, Fig. 8.3

Binocular Vision
3. Parallax

STL, Fig. 8.6

STL, Fig. 8.4

Stereoscopic Vision
Stereoscopic vision was discovered in 1838 by Charles Wheatstone.

Left eye

Right eye

Stereoscopic Vision
However, there is a problem. The eye does actually two things: 1. It aims the two eyes at an object depending on the depth.

2. It accommodates the lens.

An unsolvable problem?
1 1 2 2

2 1 2

2 1 1

If you have more than 2 points you get even more possible solutions!

Repeating patterns can fool the eye

What the eye should do What the eye is tricked into doing

Autostereogram Brewsters wallpaper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram

Repeating patterns can fool the eye

Objects closer together seem closer to the eye Objects further apart seem farther to the eye

Autostereogram Brewsters wallpaper

Objects further apart seem farther to the eye (2 tigers per 2 square) Objects closer together seem closer to the eye (2.5 tigers per 2 square) Intermediate case (2.2 dolphins per 2 squares)

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Combination of repeating patterns and problem of ambiguity of position: Magic-Eye

www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~petz/sirds.html

Can there be an advantage of not being able to see properly in 3D?

Self portrait Rembrandt (1606-1669)

Some remarks

Binocular rivalry http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/blake/rivalry/Wheatstone.html

Eye dominance

Is it a property determined by our cultural background?

Meaning of a color in different cultures, some examples: China: luck India: purity (in Western cultures purity is often blue) Western: love

China: sacred, imperial (royalty in Western cultures is purple) Western: cowardice, deceit, betrayal, jealousy, dishonesty Germany: loyalty US: depression India: Color of Krishna China: immortality, seriousness

Is it a property determined by our language?

Color words in languages develop in a specific order and often reflect the connections between colors. Some languages have only the words for black/dark and white/light: Dugerm Dani (New Guinea) Some languages have words for all basic colors: Zuni (USA) Some languages are in between these two extremes: Mandarin (China) There is no generic word for orange, but the word is derived from the fruit.

So what is color???
What is necessary for color perception: Illumination Source (Light/photons) Object: Interaction 1. Absorption 2. Transmission 3. Reflection 4. Scattering 5. Refraction 6. Diffraction 7. Interference

Direct/indirect

Detector (Eye)

Interpretation (Brain)

Is it a property determined by our language?

J. DAVIDOFF, I. DAVIES & D. ROBERSON

Nature 398, 203 - 204 (1999); hue (horizontal axis) against lightness (vertical axis).

How do languages develop words for colors?

yellow-green Black dark red White bright green-yellow blue brown

purple pink orange gray

WCS: World Color Survey

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/

Cyan

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/grid.jpg

WCS: World Color Survey

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/grid.jpg

WCS: World Color Survey

Resolving the question of color naming universals Paul Kay and Terry Regier PNAS, vol 100, no 15, pp 9085-9089 110 non-industrialized languages of monolingual speakers were tested.

Critique of the WCS

Are there non-trivial constraints on colour categorization? B.A.C. Saunders, J. van Brakel Behavourial and Brain Sciences (1997), 20, 167-179 1. Color is an objective property equally defined by all human beings. 2. Hue, Saturation and Brightness completely describe color. 3. There are 4 hues: green, red, blue, yellow 4. The unique hues are defined by so- called opponent channels. That is, the brain always compares a) red (L come) to green (M cone) and b) blue (S cone) to yellow (M cone + L cone).

Color is an objective property equally defined by all human beings.

11 basic color terms? 1/2. WHITE/BLACK YELLOW/green 6. blue 3. RED 7. brown 4/5. GREEN/yellow or 8-11. purple/pink/orange/grey

Critique:

The 11 terms were derived from American English! Tests were often done on bilingual speakers Faulty reasoning Color term development in children starts later than 3 years.

Hue, Saturation and Brightness completely describe color

There are 4 hues: green, red, blue, yellow

Newton claimed 7 hues (in accordance with the musical scale?) Thomas Young claimed 3 (although he changed opinion on which were the 3) Wollaston claimed 4 Helmholtz: 4 colors in spectrum but boundaries are not sharp. Majority opinion is 5: red, yellow, green, blue, violet What have we learned: 3 primaries can cover most of the possibly existing colors, but not all, except when the three primaries are chose as abstract colors. Choosing only existing colors as primaries we would need all possible existing wavelength to cover the whole of existing colors.

The unique hues are defined by socalled opponent channels

Color term development in children starts later than 3 years. The most easy remembered color seemed to be orange in several studies (not any of the opponent hues).

On average there seems to be something corresponding to an opponent channel. But no individual opponent cells have been found.

Please read the article by Saunders and Brakel. We will try to talk about it in the next lecture. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchi ve/bbs.saunders.html

Some interesting theories

http://igoresha.virtualave.net/OmniResearch/articles/chinesecolors.html

Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain, Page 180/181, Perennial

Summary
Experience Experiment Development of color words and concepts Comparisons of languages Experience brain function Can we explain colors in terms of brain/mental states?