Proximity judgments in color space: Tests of a Euclidean color geometry

We describe two tests of the hypothesis that human judgments of the proximity of colors are consistent with a Euclidean geometry on color matching space. The first test uses proximity judgments to measure the angle between any two intersecting lines in color space. Pairwise estimates of the angles b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) 1995-03, Vol.35 (6), p.827-835
Main Authors: Wuerger, Sophie M., Maloney, Laurence T., Krauskopf, John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Color geometry
Color Perception - physiology
Color similarity
Distance Perception - physiology
Euclidean geometry
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Judgment
Male
Mathematics
Perception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Salience of colors
Space life sciences
Space Perception - physiology
Vision
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Summary:We describe two tests of the hypothesis that human judgments of the proximity of colors are consistent with a Euclidean geometry on color matching space. The first test uses proximity judgments to measure the angle between any two intersecting lines in color space. Pairwise estimates of the angles between three lines in a plane were made in order to test the additivity of angles. Three different color proximity tasks were considered. Additivity failed for each of the three proximity tasks. Secondly, we tested a prediction concerning the growth of the variability of judgments of similarity with the distance between the test and reference stimuli. The Euclidean hypothesis was also rejected by this test. The results concerning the growth of variability are consistent with the assumption that observers use a city-block metric when judging the proximity of colored lights.
ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/0042-6989(94)00170-Q