Colour Discrimination

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Abstract
A survey is made of the influence of different observing conditions on colour discrimination ability. These include effects relating to field size and illumination, the location of the test patch, level of adaptation of the eye and the degree of fixation or image stabilization employed. Related anomalies found in congenital colour deficiency and in defects acquired later in life due to diseases are also reviewed. The various phenomena of wavelength discrimination are then discussed in terms of four stages in the process of colour perception, namely the response of the retinal receptors, the transmission of the colour signals along the optic pathway to the brain, the generation of the colour sensations in the visual cortex, and the perception of the visual image. The material as a whole provides support for trichromatic theories of colour vision and implies the presence of three retinal processes with maximum sensitivity in the red, green and blue parts of the spectrum. There is, however, much to suggest that the process for red-green discrimination differs in some fundamental way from that responsible for the discrimination of blue from green.

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