木村 英司

Spatial averaging of luminances over a variegated region has been assumed in visual processes such as light adaptation, texture segmentation, and lightness scaling. Despite the importance of these processes, how mean brightness can be computed remains largely unknown. We investigated how accurately and precisely mean brightness can be compared for two briefly presented heterogeneous luminance arrays composed of different numbers of disks. The results demonstrated that mean brightness judgments can be made in a task-dependent and flexible fashion. Mean brightness judgments measured via the point of subjective equality (PSE) exhibited a consistent bias, suggesting that observers relied strongly on a subset of the disks (e.g., the highest- or lowest-luminance disks) in making their judgments. Moreover, the direction of the bias flexibly changed with the task requirements, even when the stimuli were completely the same. When asked to choose the brighter array, observers relied more on the highest-luminance disks. However, when asked to choose the darker array, observers relied more on the lowest-luminance disks. In contrast, when the task was the same, observers’ judgments were almost immune to substantial changes in apparent contrast caused by changing the background luminance. Despite the bias in PSE, the mean brightness judgments were precise. The just-noticeable differences measured for multiple disks were similar to or even smaller than those for single disks, which suggested a benefit of averaging. These findings implicated flexible weighted averaging; that is, mean brightness can be judged efficiently by flexibly relying more on a few items that are relevant to the task.

The present study investigated how color information was summarized in multicolor mosaics. The mosaics were composed of small elements of 17 colors that roughly belonged to a single color category. We manipulated the degree of color variation around the mean by varying the proportion of different color elements. Observers matched the mean color of the multicolor mosaic by adjusting the color of a spatially uniform matching stimulus. Results showed that when the color variation was large, the matched color deviated from the colorimetric mean toward the most-saturated color, although the hue of the matched color was almost the same as that of the colorimetric mean. These findings together suggested differential processing of hue and saturation. The deviation of the matched color decreased, but did not disappear, when the color variation was reduced. The analysis of color metric underlying color averaging revealed differential color scaling in nearly orthogonal blue-orange and green-purple directions, implying that the visual system does not solely rely on linear cone-opponent codes when summarizing color signals. The deviation itself was consistently found regardless of different color metrics tested. The robustness of the deviation indicated an inherent bias of mean color judgments favoring highly saturated colors.

It has been shown that when two arrays of Arabic numerals were briefly presented, observers could accurately indicate which array contained the larger number of a target numeral. This study investigated whether this rapid proportion comparison can be extended to other meaningful symbols that share some of notable properties of Arabic numerals. We tested mainly several Japanese Kanji letters, each of which represents a meaning and can work as a word. Using physically identical stimulus sets that could be interpreted as different types of letters, Experiment 1 first confirmed the rapid proportion comparison with Arabic numerals for Japanese participants. Experiment 2 showed that the rapid proportion comparison can be extended to Kanji numerals. Experiment 3 successfully demonstrated that rapid proportion judgments can be found with non-quantitative Kanji letters that are used frequently. Experiment 4 further demonstrated the rapid proportion comparison with frequently used meaningful non-letter symbols (gender icons). The rapid processing cannot be attributed to fluent processing of familiar items, because it was not found with familiar phonograms (Japanese Kana letters). These findings suggest that the rapid proportion comparison can be commonly found with frequently used meaningful symbols, even though their meaning is not relevant to the task.

When distinguishing illumination from reflectance edges, both edge blurriness and textural continuity across an edge are generally used as cues to promote the illumination-edge interpretation. However, when these cues were combined, i.e., when a dark spot having a blurred edge was placed on textured backgrounds, we unexpectedly found that the spot appears stained or painted rather than differently illuminated ("stain on texture" phenomenon). This phenomenon suggests a disruptive interaction between the visual processing of blurred edges and background texture. Our experiments showed that middle spatial-frequency components of background texture play a critical role in producing this interaction. Specifically, when a textured background had relatively stronger energy in middle spatial-frequency bands, the dark spot having a blurred edge on the textured background was perceived as differing in reflectance. The findings are discussed in view of multiple levels of visual processes: one mainly concerns low-level features such as spatial-frequency components and another is a higher-level process that takes into account the likelihood of spatial configurations in natural scenes, such as "spot shadow" in which the shadow is isolated and the shadow caster is out of sight. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

In the watercolor configuration composed of wavy double contours, both assimilative and non-assimilative color spreading have been demonstrated depending on the luminance conditions of the inner and outer contours (IC and OC, respectively). This study investigated how the induced color in the watercolor configuration was modulated by combinations of the IC and the OC color, particularly addressing non-assimilative color spreading. In two experiments, the IC color was fixed to a certain color and combined with various colors selected from a hue circle centered at the background white color. Color spreading was quantified with a chromatic cancelation technique. Results showed that both the magnitude and the apparent hue of the color spreading were largely changed with the luminance condition. When the IC contrast (Weber contrast of the IC to the background luminance) was smaller in size than the OC contrast (higher IC luminance condition), the color spreading was assimilative. When the luminance condition was reversed and the IC contrast was greater than the OC contrast (lower IC luminance condition), the color spreading was non-assimilative and yellowish. When the color spreading was analyzed in terms of cone-opponent excitations, the results were consistent with the interpretation that the color spreading is explainable by a combination of chromatic diffusion from the IC and chromatically opponent induction from the OC. The color spreading in the higher IC luminance condition mainly reflected the chromatic diffusion by both (L M) and S cone-opponent mechanisms. The non-assimilative color spreading in the lower IC luminance condition mostly reflected S-cone mediated opponent induction and the contribution of S inducing mechanisms was differentially large. These findings provided several constraints on possible visual mechanisms underlying the watercolor effect.

A colored line flanking a darker contour will appear to spread its color onto an area enclosed by the line (watercolor effect). The watercolor effect has been characterized as an assimilative effect, but non-assimilative color spreading has also been demonstrated in the same spatial configuration; e.g., when a black inner contour (IC) is paired with a blue outer contour (OC), yellow color spreading can be observed. To elucidate visual mechanisms underlying these different color spreading effects, this study investigated the effects of luminance ratio between the double contours on the induced color by systematically manipulating the IC and the OC luminance (Experiment 1) as well as the background luminance (Experiment 2). The results showed that the luminance conditions suitable for assimilative and non-assimilative color spreading were nearly opposite. When the Weber contrast of the IC to the background luminance (IC contrast) was smaller in size than that of the OC (OC contrast), the induced color became similar to the IC color (assimilative spreading). In contrast, when the OC contrast was smaller than or equal to the IC contrast, the induced color became yellow (non-assimilative spreading). Extending these findings, Experiment 3 showed that bilateral color spreading, i.e., assimilative spreading on one side and non-assimilative spreading on the other side, can also be observed in the watercolor configuration. These results suggest that the assimilative and the non-assimilative spreading were mediated by different visual mechanisms. The properties of the assimilative spreading are consistent with the model proposed to account for neon color spreading (Grossberg and Mingolia, 1985) and extended for the watercolor effect (Paola and Grassbero, 2005). However, the present results suggest that additional mechanisms are needed to account for the non-assimilative color spreading.

The present study investigated the effects of interocular suppression on the pupillary constriction to luminance and color changes. Stable interocular suppression was produced by presenting a flickering high-contrast grating to one eye and a spatially homogeneous field to the other eye. The results showed that the pupillary responses to luminance as well as color changes were clearly attenuated during interocular suppression; the pupillary constriction to stimulus changes was delayed and reduced in amplitude when those changes occurred in the suppressed eye. The attenuation of the pupillary response was observed over a wide range of test contrast extending to well above the threshold level. Moreover, the properties of the suppressive effect were very similar to those assessed psychophysically using both detection thresholds for weak stimuli and reaction times for suprathreshold stimuli. Overall, the present study provided converging evidence that the pupillary response can be a useful objective probe of interocular suppression in humans. The results are discussed in view of possible differential involvements of subcortical and cortical visual processing in driving the pupillary response as well as in interocular suppression.