Sensory and cognitive contributions of color to the recognition of natural scenes

Abstract

Although color plays a prominent part in our subjective experience of the visual world, the evolutionary advantage of color vision is still unclear [1] [2], with most current answers pointing towards specialized uses, for example to detect ripe fruit amongst foliage [3] [4] [5] [6]. We investigated whether color has a more general role in visual recognition by looking at the contribution of color to the encoding and retrieval processes involved in pattern recognition [7] [8] [9]. Recognition accuracy was higher for color images of natural scenes than for luminance-matched black and white images, and color information contributed to both components of the recognition process. Initially, color leads to an image-coding advantage at the very early stages of sensory processing, most probably by easing the image-segmentation task. Later, color leads to an advantage in retrieval, presumably as the result of an enhanced image representation in memory due to the additional attribute. Our results ascribe color vision a general role in the processing of visual form, starting at the very earliest stages of analysis: color helps us to recognize things faster and to remember them better.

A Novel Method for Teaching the First Instances of Simple Discrimination to Nonverbal Children with Autism in a Laboratory Environment

“…these generally good outcomes stand in contrast with the delayed-cue procedural failures that have been reported with participants who functioned at very low behavioral levels (e.g., Oppenheimer, Saunders, & Spradlin, 1993). Perhaps our generally good findings were due in part to the combined use of the delayed S+ and delayed cue procedures in the context of a task that required discrimination of salient stimuli: food items or tokens that could be exchanged for food that differed along a primitive stimulus dimension, color (Gegenfurtner & rieger, 2000). regarding points of particular interest within the data set, we note that all participants displayed a large number of responses during tS1, specifically during delayed S+ training.…”

Diagnostic Colors Mediate Scene Recognition

“…On this basis, the authors argued for comparatively late effects of color in recognition. In contrast, Gegenfurtner (1998) showed that tachistoscopic (30-50 ms) presentations of colored pictures elicited better retrieval from memory than their luminance counterparts, illustrating that chromatic cues can index scene memory. This color advantage occurred irrespective of whether the target represented a human-made (e.g., streets) or a natural scene (e.g., flowers and landscapes).…”

Color makes a difference: Two-dimensional object naming in literate and illiterate subjects

“…For example, very brief presentations of natural scenes are matched more accurately by subjects when shown in color than when shown as luminance-controlled grey-scale images, which indicates that color provides an important source of information in the pre-recognition stage of visual processing (Gegenfurtner & Rieger, 2000). According to Gegenfurtner and Rieger (2000), color information contributes at both the sensory (coding) and cognitive (representation) levels of information processing for object recognition in natural scenes. More recently, Tanaka et al (2001) proposed an object recognition model, the "Shape + Surface" model of object recognition.…”

“…Overall, these studies suggest that the function of color in object recognition is not well understood and there is no agreement concerning its role in object naming/recognition. Furthermore, there are some evidence suggesting that, at a lower visual processing level, color helps to diVerentiate objects (Gegenfurtner & Rieger, 2000;Wurm, Legge, Isenberg, & Luebker, 1993). For example, very brief presentations of natural scenes are matched more accurately by subjects when shown in color than when shown as luminance-controlled grey-scale images, which indicates that color provides an important source of information in the pre-recognition stage of visual processing (Gegenfurtner & Rieger, 2000).…”

“…Furthermore, there are some evidence suggesting that, at a lower visual processing level, color helps to diVerentiate objects (Gegenfurtner & Rieger, 2000;Wurm, Legge, Isenberg, & Luebker, 1993). For example, very brief presentations of natural scenes are matched more accurately by subjects when shown in color than when shown as luminance-controlled grey-scale images, which indicates that color provides an important source of information in the pre-recognition stage of visual processing (Gegenfurtner & Rieger, 2000). According to Gegenfurtner and Rieger (2000), color information contributes at both the sensory (coding) and cognitive (representation) levels of information processing for object recognition in natural scenes.…”