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| Volume 4, Number 9, Article 7, Pages 747-763 |
doi:10.1167/4.9.7 |
http://journalofvision.org/4/9/7/ |
ISSN 1534-7362 |
Measurements of the effect of surface slant on perceived lightness
Caterina Ripamonti |
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA |
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Marina Bloj |
Department of Optometry, University of Bradford,
Bradford, UK |
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Robin Hauck |
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA |
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Kiran Mitha |
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA |
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Scott Greenwald |
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA |
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Shannon I. Maloney |
Department of Psychology, University of California,
Santa Barbara, CA, USA |
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David H. Brainard |
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA |
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Abstract
When a planar object is rotated with respect to a
directional light source, the reflected luminance changes. If surface lightness
is to be a reliable guide to surface identity, observers must compensate for
such changes. To the extent they do, observers are said to be lightness
constant. We report data from a lightness matching task that assesses lightness
constancy with respect to changes in object slant. On each trial, observers
viewed an achromatic standard object and indicated the best match from a palette
of 36 grayscale samples. The standard object and the palette were visible
simultaneously within an experimental chamber. The chamber illumination was
provided from above by a theater stage lamp. The standard objects were
uniformly-painted flat cards. Different groups of naïve observers made
matches under two sets of instructions. In the
Neutral Instructions, observers were
asked to match the appearance of the standard and palette sample. In the
Paint Instructions, observers were
asked to choose the palette sample that was painted the same as the standard.
Several broad conclusions may be drawn from the results. First, data for most
observers were neither luminance matches nor lightness constant matches. Second,
there were large and reliable individual differences. To characterize these, a
constancy index was obtained for each observer by comparing how well the data
were accounted for by both luminance matching and lightness constancy. The index
could take on values between 0 (luminance matching) and 1 (lightness constancy).
Individual observer indices ranged between 0.17 and 0.63 with mean 0.40 and
median 0.40. An auxiliary slant-matching experiment rules out variation in
perceived slant as the source of the individual variability. Third, the effect
of instructions was small compared to the inter-observer variability.
Implications of the data for models of lightness perception are discussed.
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