title: Simultaneous lightness contrast on plain and articulated surrounds.
abstract: Simultaneous lightness contrast is stronger when the dark and light backgrounds of the classic display (where one of the targets is an increment and the other is a decrement) are replaced by articulated fields of equivalent average luminances. Although routinely attributed to articulation per se, this effect may simply result from the increase in highest luminance in the light articulated, vs plain, background; by locally darkening the decremental target, such an increase would amplify the difference between the targets. We disentangled the effects of highest luminance and articulation by measuring, separately, the magnitude of lightness contrast on dark and light plain and articulated backgrounds. We found that highest luminance and articulation contribute separately to the final illusion.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, via Venezia 8, I 35131 Padua, Italy. paola.bressan@unipd.it
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bressan
authors.forename: Rossana
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Actis-Grosso
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity; D003624:Darkness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008027:Light; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009903:Optical Illusions; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011601:Psychophysics; D014794:Visual Fields