title: Metameric intransitivity.
abstract: There are two kinds of afterimages. In negative afterimages, looking at a blank field after staring at a colored figure gives a figure whose color is complementary to that of the original figure. Less well understood and studied is the phenomenon of induced positive afterimages, in which staring at a colored area surrounding a small white test patch produces an afterimage in which the hue of the surround is transferred into the previously white area. Using these differences between positive and negative afterimages and also simultaneous color contrast, which has an effect on a test patch different from either of the afterimage effects, we describe a new effect, metameric intransitivity, in which perceptually similar images can generate markedly different afterimages, whereas perceptually different images can generate indistinguishable afterimages. Supplemental figures depicting the stimuli, results, and method for generating the intransitive metamers in this study may be downloaded from http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
authors.affiliation: University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey 07103, USA. eric.altschuler@umdnj.edu
authors.forename: Abigail E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Alice J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Hon
authors.forename: Christopher W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Tyler
authors.forename: Eric L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Altschuler
mesh_terms: D000360:Afterimage / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003116:Color; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005366:Figural Aftereffect / Q000502:physiology; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology