Psychology 3203

Questions to Ponder before Test 2

1. Know the relationship between radiance, illuminance, luminance, reflectance, and brightness. Can I predict the amount of brightness if I know how much light energy is coming from an object?

2. In discussions about brightness, I said that the rule is "the coal is always black." Using two objects, like a piece of coal and my white-if-it-was-clean coffee cup, explain what this statement means with respect to illuminance, luminance, and reflectance. Is it an illusion or is it real that the coal is always black?

3. Be able to describe the structure of the eye and the retina.

4. What is the duplex retina? What is the evidence for having a duplex retina? How should we think about having a duplex retina? Are we like the anableps?

5. Explain the simultaneous contrast illusion. Does this illusion contradict or support the concept of brightness constancy? Is it an illusion or is it real?

6. Know the effects seen with Benussi rings. Are the effects real or illusions?

7. What are Mach bands? Are Mach bands real or are they illusions?

8. Understand how "lateral inhibition" works in horseshoe crab vision.

9. Understand how "lateral inhibition" applies to Mach bands and the Hermann Grid illusion. Is the Hermann Grid real or an illusion?

10. What is the difference between hue, saturation, and brightness? How many colors can we see?

11. How were the Munsell and CIE color systems developed? Note similarities and differences.

12. How do we get a color circle? Why is purple considered such an important color?

13. Understand how additive and subtractive color mixing work in daily life. Explain how to make my coffe cup look purple, using additive and subtractive color mixing.

14. Explain the development of trichromatic theory. What did Helmholtz do? What did he find?

15. Explain the development of opponent process theory. What did Hering consider to be the critical evidence supporting his hypothetical color receptors?

16. Know the location and shape of the spectral sensitivity curves for the three types of cone receptors in humans. What are the "primary" colors according to the cones? Does this contradict our tendency to talk about red, yellow, green, and blue as being primary colors?

17. Why should we label the cones as Short, Medium, & Long wavelength detectors instead of detecting the colors, Blue, Green, and Red?

18. At the level of the cones, how do we explain the seeing white, blue, yellow, and purpe?

19. Identify the three types of color blindness. Explain what happens to the color world of individuals with each type of color blindness.

20. What is simultaneous color contrast? What is color constancy? Are these effects real or they illusions?