Colour constancy under simultaneous changes in surface position and illuminant

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Abstract
Two kinds of constancy underlie the everyday perception of surface colour: constancy under changes in illuminant and constancy under changes in surface position. Classically, these two constancies seem to place conflicting demands on the visual system: to both take into account the region surrounding a surface and also discount it. It is shown here, however, that the ability of observers to make surface–colour matches across simultaneous changes in test–surface position and illuminant in computer–generated ‘Mondrian’ patterns is almost as good as across changes in illuminant alone. Performance was no poorer when the surfaces surrounding the test surface were permuted, or when information from a potential comparison surface, the one with the highest luminance, was suppressed. Computer simulations of cone–photoreceptor activity showed that a reliable cue for making surface–colour matches in all experimental conditions was provided by the ratios of cone excitations between the test surfaces and a spatial average over the whole pattern.

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