Bias effects of short- and long-term color memory for unique objects

Abstract

Are objects remembered with a more saturated color? Some of the evidence supporting this statement comes from research using 'memory colors' -the typical colors of particular objects, for example the green of grass. The problematic aspect of these findings is that many different exemplars exist, some of which might exhibit a higher saturation than the one measured by the experimenter. Here we avoid this problem by using unique personal items and comparing long-and short-term color memory matches (in Hue, Value and Chroma) with those obtained with the object present. Our results, on average, confirm that objects are remembered as more saturated than they are. © 201X Optical Society of AmericaOCIS codes : (330.0330) Vision, color, and visual optics; (330.1690) Color; (330.1720 1.IntroductionIn our everyday life color is a property strongly associated with objects and we have all heard and maybe even seen with our mind's eye the "red rose" of Robert Burn's poem or the "green grass of home" sung by Tom Jones. This idea of linking certain objects with a defined color was formalized by Hering and Katz in the early 20 century, as discussed in [1,2]. Subsequently Koffka [3] and others put forward the specific hypothesis that colors are remembered more saturated, in line with the Gestalt hypothesis of change towards better or the ideal; sometimes identified as a 'positive time error ' [4]. A modern formulation of this can now be found as a statement of fact in some image processing [5] and photography books [6]. However in more than 80 years of research into color and memory the evidence to support this has been inconclusive at best.Hanawalt & Post [2] report 4 studies using different methods to explicitly test for an increase in saturation of remembered colors. They used abstract color stimuli, different task and timings; under none of their tested conditions they find that remembered colors are more saturated.In Newhall et al. [7] the main experiment is a study using colored lights (2 deg visual field) presented against a neutral background where the authors compared simultaneous color matches with successive. The latter being the memory task, where after a gap of 5 sec. participants were asked to set the colorimeter to the color that had been previously presented also for 5 sec. A comparison between the matches in the simultaneous and the successive condition indicates a consistent increase in Munsell Chroma (and Value to a lesser extent) for the memory matches. In this paper they also describe an older study (their Supplementary Experiment 3) in which participants are asked to select Munsell samples that best represent the recalled colors of a series of unseen objects of highly diagnostic color (brick, sand, grass and dry grass, skin, concrete, pine trees and weathered wood). For some of these objects the memory matches seem to be of higher Munsell Chroma and Value than the 'standards' they compare them to. This latter experiment was recreated by Bartleson [8] using essentially the same methods and arriving at s...

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