A study finds that people in fully immersive virtual reality were often unaware when most of the color in the virtual environment was removed from the visual periphery, suggesting limits to human color awareness. People have the intuitive impression that their experience of color in the world extends to the visual periphery. Michael Cohen, Caroline Robertson, and colleagues designed two experiments to assess people's awareness of color in the periphery. The experiments included a total of 178 people using virtual reality headsets. In the first experiment, participants explored 360-degree virtual environments while eye-tracking technology was used to continuously monitor where participants were looking. Next, the researchers desaturated the color of the periphery to varying degrees. In the most extreme condition, with only 10° of the virtual world remaining in color, 30% of participants did not notice the desaturation. However, when 32.5° remained in color, 83% of participants did not notice the desaturation. In the second experiment, participants were asked to observe desaturation and indicate the thresholds at which they could detect it. Desaturations were not detected beyond a 37.5° field of view and were detected an average of 4.67 seconds after onset. According to the authors, the results suggest that humans' peripheral color awareness may be less accurate than believed.
Article #19-22294: "The limits of color awareness during active, real-world vision," by Michael A. Cohen, Thomas L. Botch, and Caroline E. Robertson.
MEDIA CONTACT: Michael A. Cohen, Amherst College, MA; tel: 713-253-2344; e-mail: mcohen@amherst.edu
###
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences