アイテム詳細

要旨

We used a recognition memory paradigm to assess the influence of color information on visual memory for color images of natural scenes. During the presentation phase 48 images of natural scenes were presented on a CRT for exposure durations between 50 and 1000 msec followed by a random noise mask. Half of the images were presented in color and half in black white. In the subsequent query phase the same 48 images were intermixed with 48 new images and the subjects had to indicate which of the images they had already seen during the presentation phase. We found that performance increased with exposure duration. However, independent of exposure duration subjects performed 5-10 better for colored than for black white images, even for exposure durations as short as 50 msec. This effect cannot be due to contrast differences in the images since a second experiment showed little effect of contrast once the images were suprathreshold. Further experiments showed that performance worsened when images were presented in color and tested in black white, or vice versa. Performance was not impaired for a comparison group of 31 color deficient observers (17 protanopes and 14 deuteranopes), whose recognition performance was also better for colored than for black white images. We conclude that color information plays an important role in the early and fast processing of visual images. Both sensory and cognitive factors seem to contribute to the superior recognition of color images. Finally, color-deficient observers appear to be able to compensate for their reduced chromatic information range when viewing and analyzing complex scenes.