Chapter 6: Color Vision
Learning Objectives
- Describe how color vision is useful in our lives
- Compare and contrast the trichromatic, opponent process, and retinex theories of color vision
- Describe which parts of the visual system work according to the three color vision theories described above.
- Describe the types and cause of “color blindness”
- Explain the main three things that contribute to our ability to experience an object as being the same color.
- Describe the differences/similarities between color and lightness constancy.
For many people, color is an extremely salient aspect of the visual world—it helps us separate objects from the background and it helps us detect danger. But not everybody has typical color vision. About 6.7% of the world’s population has “anomalous” color vision (Male et al., 2023), which typically means that they have difficulty distinguishing some colors from others. Although atypical color vision is often referred to as color blindness, this is a misnomer because the total absence of color perception (achromatopsia) is very rare. The prevalence of color vision deficits varies by race/ethnicity. This chapter discusses the uses of color, the ways that color is encoded in the visual system, the causes of “color blindness”, and finally, how our perception of color is flexible and context-dependent.
This chapter was edited by Jill Grose-Fifer, Ph.D.
