Improvement in human vision under bright light: grain or gain?

Abstract

1. The factor by which increment threshold changes with changing background intensity is less if the test flash is small than if it is large. This is commonly attributed to a reduction of the area over which visual signals are integrated as light adaptation increases. 2. We propose and test an alternative hypothesis that the change in slope is the result of purely local processes: if it is assumed that increasing the background intensity increases the exponent of the local response function, but does not alter the extent of spatial integration, then the threshold of the small test flash will rise more slowly than the threshold of the large test flash simply because the small test flash is of a higher intensity than the large and therefore evokes a correspondingly greater local response. 3. We measured small and large test field increment thresholds and dichoptic brightness matches as a function of background intensity. 4. The log-log slopes of the small and large field increment threshold functions differed by not more than about 20%, suggesting that even under the conventional interpretation of such data, the change of spatial integration is less than is usually supposed. 5. The intensity of a large (2.3 deg) suprathreshold test field matched to a standard in the other eye varies with increasing background intensity with the same shallow slope as the small test (2.6 min) threshold versus intensity function; this is in agreement with the predictions of the local non-linearity hypothesis and suggests that there is no substantial change in spatial integration during light adaptation.