A recent study has revealed that the perception of color changes with seasons. The study mostly focuses on yellow.
It’s common knowledge that seasons are dominated by unique colors, such as pastel colors in spring, white in winter, orange and brown in autumn and green in summer.
However, a team of scientists at the University of York claims that when the season changes, our perception of color changes as well. The scientists were mainly interested in understanding how individuals perceive yellow from one season to another. What they discovered is pretty amazing.
The scientists said that people can identify four unique colors which are pure and the blends they create. Those four colors are green, blue, red and yellow.
However, even in this very special group of colors, yellow is still a lot more special. In spite of the fact that different people see colors differently and frequently disagree on what real green, real blue and real red look like, they agree on what real yellow is.
The scientists at the University of York decided to discover an explanation for why this is so. They asked why this color is as stable as it is and questioned what kind of factors might be able to make it change. Could this be connected to the colors in the environment surrounding us or does this have anything to do with the biology of our eyes?
In the study, the scientists selected 67 people, both women and men, and told them to answer questions regarding the color in January and June. The participants were taken to a dark room, were given the time to adjust their eyes and were put in front of a machine called colorimeter. They were then asked to switch a dial backwards and forwards until they believed they were looking at real yellow, without any traces of green or red in it.
The scientists discovered that real yellow looks a lot different in the summer than in the winter. This is the first study that focuses on proving that changes that occur naturally in our environment affect how we perceive colors.
The lead author of the study and PhD student, Lauren Welbourne said that these discoveries show that between different seasons our visions adjust to the changes in the environment. Welbourne believes that these findings will help better understand how visual processing works. However, she admitted that they won’t be helpful in treating or healing a visual problem.
The recent study was published in the Current Biology journal.
Image Source: paradoxplace.com
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