Are Color Experiences the Same across the Visual Field?

摘要

It seems obvious to laypeople that neurotypical humansexperience color equivalently across their entire visual field.To some neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers,though, this claim has been met with skepticism, as neurophysiologicalevidence indicates the mechanisms that support colorperception degrade with eccentricity. However, the argumentthat this entails altered color experience in peripheral visionis not universally accepted. Here, we address whether colorexperience is essentially equivalent between central and peripheralvision. To assess this, we will obtain similarity relationshipsbetween color experiences across the visual field using bothonline and laboratory-based far-field displays, while removingthe confounds of saccades, memory, and expectation aboutcolor experiences. Our experiment was designed to provideclear evidence that would favor either unchanged or alteredcolor experience relationships in the periphery. Our resultsare consistent with lay people’s phenomenological reports:Color experiences, as probed by similarity relationships incentral vision and the far field (60°), are equivalent when elicitedby large stimuli. These findings challenge the widespreadview in philosophy and cognitive science that peripheral colorexperiences are illusory, and are discussed in the context oftheir related neurophysiological, psychophysical, and philosophicalliterature.