Here's a couple of points to consider:
(1) To what extent is the perception of color hard-wired and
to what extent is it dependent upon experience and learning?
It is clear that trichromatic theory and opponent processing
are mostly "hard-wired" but color constancy appears to be
a top-down process -- a color remains the same under different
conditions of illumination and surrounding colors because
we take into account the different illumination levels and
other environmental levels. But what ties all this processing
together? I'm sure that someone will come up with a neural
network or some other mathematical model that can account
for this. But everyone has a slightly different model of processing
and for the dress, it produces one perception above a threshold
(blue-black) and another perception below a threshold (gold-white).
Stimuli on such a "boundary" are perceived differently by different
people but we probably usually are not aware of the differences
because they do not call attention to themselves in everyday
life. Now that the phenomenon has been found, I am sure that
enterprising perception researchers will now find other common
instances where similar things occur but which we have ignored.
Kinda like "discovering" people with "super autobiographical"
memories -- they have probably around us all along but such
an ability never called attention to itself until AJ/Jill Price came
around.
(2) Do I really need to point out that all of the "data" we are relying
upon have been collected in a haphazard manner under uncontrolled
conditions? Yes, the effect is robust but don't we need to demonstrate
the effect under controlled conditions where we manipulate variables
such a levels of illumination, different colors and shapes, and other
variables? Any explanation that is offered now is actually just a
hypothesis in need of testing.
NOTE: This is an example of "abductive reasoning", first systematized
by Charles Peirce. That is, an event occurs and hypotheses are
generated to explain the event. End of story. Science proceeds beyond
this by deductively building on the explanations and then inductively
tests
assertions derived from the deductive explanation. For more on this,
see my review of David Haig's book which argues for greater use of
abductive reasoning but there are problems with his recommendations;
see:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268687360_Would_Sherlock_Holmes_Have_Been_a_Good_Researcher
(3) For people who receive Tips in digest form (like myself) one can
always check out the Mail Archive website to see responses; see:
http://www.mail-archive.com/tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu/info.html
Somebody email Annette about this. ;-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
---------- Original Message -----------
On Sat, 28 Feb 2015 06:47:14 -0800, Annette Taylor wrote:
I only get the digest so I'll have to wait for tomorrow morning to read
any
more about this but we are just now covering sensation/perception in
intro so
of course I had to talk about this in class. Most of the explanations I
have
seen on tips so far do not account for the fact that two people can be
looking
at the dress from approximately exactly the same angle with the same
lighting
conditions and their first impression is opposite of the other. The fact
that
simultaneously two people see it differently is what needs to be
explained.
Sure enough in class, about 75% of the class saw blue/black and 25% saw
white/gold. They were all looking at the same time on the projection
from my
laptop to the overhead display, so many of the explanations about light
and
shadow cannot stand because the distribution was such that it would be
impossible for such dramatic shifts.
So far the best I was able to find online to use in class yesterday was
that
this is a combination effect of individual differences in perception of
light
and shadow--some people's first impression is that the dress is in
shadow and
others that it is in light and the brain the interprets the colors
accordingly.
I did bring in the link to the nice website here:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum-adelsonCheckShadow/index.html (my
favorite
website for explaining illusions). This all happens along with
individual
differences in receptors--some people having more or less of the
different
receptors, particularly red and green, and THEN individual differences
in how
these combine for opponent processes.
I don't know, that's a lot of mushy combinations that I would think
would show
up more often in day-to-day life than just for this one event.
So I hope when I open up tips tomorrow morning I will have more to take
to
class on Monday :)
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