title: The empirical basis of color perception.
abstract: Rationalizing the perceptual effects of spectral stimuli has been a major challenge in vision science for at least the last 200 years. Here we review evidence that this otherwise puzzling body of phenomenology is generated by an empirical strategy of perception in which the color an observer sees is entirely determined by the probability distribution of the possible sources of the stimulus. The rationale for this strategy in color vision, as in other visual perceptual domains, is the inherent ambiguity of the real-world origins of any spectral stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Box 3209, DUMC, Durham, NC 27710, USA.
authors.forename: R Beau
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Lotto
authors.forename: Dale
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Purves
mesh_terms: D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011336:Probability