Evidence map›Paper›PMID 24586299›Full record

ArticlePloS one2014

Chromatic illumination discrimination ability reveals that human colour constancy is optimised for blue daylight illuminations.

Bradley Pearce, Stuart Crichton, Michal Mackiewicz, Graham D Finlayson, Anya Hurlbert

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
48citing papers in PubMed
4.1field-weighted citation impact, top 6% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

48 citing papers in PubMed, 126 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Trial
  2. Article
  3. Visual search for warm and cool colors.Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision · 2025
    Article
  4. Achromatic loci in normal and anomalous trichromats.Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision · 2025
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Color and Spatial Frequency Provide Functional Signatures of Retinotopic Visual Areas.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Color constancy for daylight illumination changes in anomalous trichromats and dichromats.Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision · 2023
    Article
  15. Review
  16. Understanding insect colour constancy.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022
    Review
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Bradley PearceInstitute of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, England, United Kingdom.
Stuart CrichtonInstitute of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, England, United Kingdom.
Michal MackiewiczSchool of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, United Kingdom.
Graham D FinlaysonSchool of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, United Kingdom.
Anya HurlbertInstitute of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, England, United Kingdom.
Newcastle University · GBUniversity of East Anglia · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The phenomenon of colour constancy in human visual perception keeps surface colours constant, despite changes in their reflected light due to changing illumination. Although colour constancy has evolved under a constrained subset of illuminations, it is unknown whether its underlying mechanisms, thought to involve multiple components from retina to cortex, are optimised for particular environmental variations. Here we demonstrate a new method for investigating colour constancy using illumination matching in real scenes which, unlike previous methods using surface matching and simulated scenes, allows testing of multiple, real illuminations. We use real scenes consisting of solid familiar or unfamiliar objects against uniform or variegated backgrounds and compare discrimination performance for typical illuminations from the daylight chromaticity locus (approximately blue-yellow) and atypical spectra from an orthogonal locus (approximately red-green, at correlated colour temperature 6700 K), all produced in real time by a 10-channel LED illuminator. We find that discrimination of illumination changes is poorer along the daylight locus than the atypical locus, and is poorest particularly for bluer illumination changes, demonstrating conversely that surface colour constancy is best for blue daylight illuminations. Illumination discrimination is also enhanced, and therefore colour constancy diminished, for uniform backgrounds, irrespective of the object type. These results are not explained by statistical properties of the scene signal changes at the retinal level. We conclude that high-level mechanisms of colour constancy are biased for the blue daylight illuminations and variegated backgrounds to which the human visual system has typically been exposed.

Indexed as

ColorLightAdultColor PerceptionDiscrimination, PsychologicalFemaleHumansMaleYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID24586299
PMCPMC3929610
OpenAlexW2127981434

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.