Abstract
When the environment changes, vision adapts to maintain accurate perception. For repeatedly encountered environments, learning to adjust more rapidly would be beneficial, but past work remains inconclusive. We tested if the visual system can learn such visual mode switching for a strongly color-tinted environment, where adaptation causes the dominant hue to fade over time. Eleven observers wore bright red glasses for five 1-hr periods per day, for 5 days. Color adaptation was measured by asking observers to identify 'unique yellow', appearing neither reddish nor greenish. As expected, the world appeared less and less reddish during the 1-hr periods of glasses wear. Critically, across days the world also appeared significantly less reddish immediately upon donning the glasses. These results indicate that the visual system learned to rapidly adjust to the reddish environment, switching modes to stabilize color vision. Mode switching likely provides a general strategy to optimize perceptual processes.
Highlights
When the visual system encounters different environments – for example a change in overall brightness, focus, or color – sensory processing changes, in order to maintain accuracy and efficiency
Putting on sunglasses can alter the color of an apple, making it difficult to determine if it is ripe, but as our visual system adapts, the apple’s apparent color gradually returns to normal
We hypothesized that color adaptation would speed up and/or get a head start over days, such that observers would experience a much smaller perceptual change in the color of the world when they put on the red glasses, providing evidence that they had learned to switch modes
Summary
When the visual system encounters different environments – for example a change in overall brightness, focus, or color – sensory processing changes, in order to maintain accuracy and efficiency. Previous work has not measured the consequences of moving in and out of an environment multiple times per day over many days, and none has tested for changes in the time course of adaptation with experience It remains unclear whether people can learn to rapidly switch visual modes with experience. We hypothesized that color adaptation would speed up and/or get a head start over days, such that observers would experience a much smaller perceptual change in the color of the world when they put on the red glasses, providing evidence that they had learned to switch modes. In a follow-up, conducted about 1 month after the main experiment, observers participated in one additional and identical testing session
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