Effects of Background Color on the Global and Local Processing of Hierarchically Organized Stimuli

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that (1) the global precedence effects in processing the hierarchically organized stimulus can be attenuated by eliminating the low spatial frequencies contained in the stimulus and (2) the human magnocellular pathway is responsible for processing low spatial frequencies and the pathway can be attenuated by imposing a red background on the stimulus. In the present study, a reaction-time experiment was conducted to examine the effect of background color of the stimulus to the processing of the hierarchically organized stimulus. The result showed that although the control condition (a green background) produced a prototypical asymmetric global interference, a red background that was equiluminant to the green background produced a symmetrical interference. It was concluded that the human magnocellular pathway is at least partially responsible in producing the global precedence effects.

Recent models and findings in visual backward masking: A comparison, review, and update

“…Such results have been reported in a number of metacontrast studies (Breitmeyer et aI., 1991;Breitmeyer & Wi!lliams, 1990; V. T. Edwards, Hogben, Clark, & Pratt, 1996;Williams, Breitmeyer, Lovegrove, & Gutierrez, 1991). Moreover, these effects of background wavelength on human transient M pathway activity and, thus, on metacontrast recently have been corroborated in a number of other psychophysical paradigms, including simple RT (Breitmeyer & Breier, 1994), choice RT discriminations between categorical and coordinate spatial stimuli (Roth & Hellige, 1998), and choice RT discriminations between local and global stimuli (Michimata, Okubo, & Mugishima, 1999).…”

Effect of Colored Overlays on Reading Comfort in People with and without Meares-Irlen Syndrome

“…Since red light has been shown to inhibit the activity of the magnocellular system [27,28], it may be assumed that colored overlays that exclude long-wavelength light (i.e., red) facilitate the magnocellular pathway's function and consequently alleviate MIS [29]. Indeed, a previous study has suggested that blue and bluish-green overlays (which exclude long-wavelength light) facilitate reading [30]; however, the most beneficial overlay color has been found to vary among individuals [5,8,22,23,31].…”

Inhibition of vection by red

“…Psychophysical studies have revealed that the magnitude of metacontrast masking decreases on the presentation of a red background (Bedwell, Brown, & Miller, 2003;Breitmeyer & Williams, 1990;Edwards, Badcock, & Nishida, 1996;Pammer & Lovegrove, 2001). Global precedence effects in hierarchically organized stimuli were weaker with a red b background than with an equiluminant green background (Michimata, Okubo, & Mugishima, 1999). Under normal luminance contrast conditions, red light impairs reading p performance (Chase, Ashourzadeh, Kelly, Monfette, & Kinsey, 2003).…”