"Extinction" of the McCollough effect does not transfer interocularly.

Abstract

A McCollough effect was induced in subjects by having them view typical adapting stimuli binocularly for 5 min. In the control condition, the strength of the McCollough effect was measured 20 min after the end of the adaptation. The strength was measured during monocular and binocular viewing of a test pattern via a color cancellation technique. Monocular strengths for the two eyes of a given subject were equal to each other and slightly weaker than the binocular strength. In the test condition, 15 min of the 20 min between adaptation and testing were spent monocularly viewing black and white gratings of the same orientation and spatial frequency as the adapting gratings. The strength of the effect as measured ipsilaterally was markedly decreased from that in the control condition. The strength of the effect as measured with the contralateral eye showed only a small decrease from that of the control condition. This finding is relevant to various models of the McCollough effect and related color aftereffects, especially those that posit a “learning” type of mechanism between achromatic spatial channels (which exhibit clear interocular transfer of various achromatic effects) and monocular color channels.