Cookies

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By continuing to browse this repository, you give consent for essential cookies to be used. You can read more about our Privacy and Cookie Policy.


Durham Research Online
You are in:

Developmental changes in colour constancy in a naturalistic object selection task

Wedge-Roberts, R and Aston, S and Beierholm, U and Kentridge, R and Hurlbert, A and Nardini, M and Olkkonen, M (2023) 'Developmental changes in colour constancy in a naturalistic object selection task.', Developmental science., 26 (2). e13306.

Abstract

When the illumination falling on a surface changes, so does the reflected light. Despite this, adult observers are good at perceiving surfaces as relatively unchanging – an ability termed colour constancy. Very few studies have investigated colour constancy in infants, and even fewer in children. Here we asked whether there is a difference in colour constancy between children and adults; what the developmental trajectory is between six and 11 years; and whether the pattern of constancy across illuminations and reflectances differs between adults and children. To this end, we developed a novel, child-friendly computer-based object selection task. In this, observers saw a dragon’s favourite sweet under a neutral illumination and picked the matching sweet from an array of eight seen under a different illumination (blue, yellow, red, or green). This set contained a reflectance match (colour constant; perfect performance) and a tristimulus match (colour inconstant). We ran two experiments, with twodimensional scenes in one and three-dimensional renderings in the other. Twenty-six adults and 33 children took part in the first experiment; 26 adults and 40 children took part in the second. Children performed better than adults on this task, and their performance decreased with age in both experiments. We found differences across illuminations and sweets, but a similar pattern across both age groups. This unexpected finding might reflect a real decrease in colour constancy from childhood to adulthood, explained by developmental changes in the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underpinning colour constancy, or differences in task strategies between children and adults.

Item Type:Article
Full text:(VoR) Version of Record
Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Download PDF
(2791Kb)
Full text:Publisher-imposed embargo
(AM) Accepted Manuscript
File format - PDF
(1408Kb)
Status:Peer-reviewed
Publisher Web site:https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13306
Publisher statement:© 2022 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date accepted:12 July 2022
Date deposited:05 August 2022
Date of first online publication:09 August 2022
Date first made open access:08 September 2022

Save or Share this output

Export:
Export
Look up in GoogleScholar