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Exploring the Determinants of Color Perception Using #Thedress and Its Variants: The Role of Spatio-Chromatic Context, Chromatic Illumination, and Material–Light Interaction

Aston, Stacey; Denisova, Kristina; Hurlbert, Anya; Olkkonen, Maria; Pearce, Bradley; Rudd, Michael; Werner, Annette; Xiao, Bei

Exploring the Determinants of Color Perception Using #Thedress and Its Variants: The Role of Spatio-Chromatic Context, Chromatic Illumination, and Material–Light Interaction Thumbnail


Authors

Stacey Aston

Kristina Denisova

Anya Hurlbert

Maria Olkkonen

Bradley Pearce

Michael Rudd

Annette Werner

Bei Xiao



Abstract

The colors that people see depend not only on the surface properties of objects but also on how these properties interact with light as well as on how light reflected from objects interacts with an individual’s visual system. Because individual visual systems vary, the same visual stimulus may elicit different perceptions from different individuals. #thedress phenomenon drove home this point: different individuals viewed the same image and reported it to be widely different colors: blue and black versus white and gold. This phenomenon inspired a collection of demonstrations presented at the Vision Sciences Society 2015 Meeting which showed how spatial and temporal manipulations of light spectra affect people’s perceptions of material colors and illustrated the variability in individual color perception. The demonstrations also explored the effects of temporal alterations in metameric lights, including Maxwell’s Spot, an entoptic phenomenon. Crucially, the demonstrations established that #thedress phenomenon occurs not only for images of the dress but also for the real dress under real light sources of different spectral composition and spatial configurations.

Citation

Aston, S., Denisova, K., Hurlbert, A., Olkkonen, M., Pearce, B., Rudd, M., …Xiao, B. (2020). Exploring the Determinants of Color Perception Using #Thedress and Its Variants: The Role of Spatio-Chromatic Context, Chromatic Illumination, and Material–Light Interaction. Emotion, 49(11), 1235-1251. https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006620963808

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 30, 2020
Online Publication Date Nov 12, 2020
Publication Date 2020-11
Deposit Date Nov 17, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Emotion
Print ISSN 1528-3542
Electronic ISSN 1931-1516
Publisher American Psychological Association
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 49
Issue 11
Pages 1235-1251
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006620963808

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Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).





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