#TheDress: The Role of Illumination Information and Individual Differences in the Psychophysics of Perceiving White–Blue Ambiguities

Abstract

In early 2015, a public debate about a perceptual phenomenon that impressively demonstrated the subjective nature of human perception was running round the globe: the debate about #TheDress, a poorly lit photograph of a lace dress that was perceived as white–gold by some, but as blue–black by others. In the present research (N = 48), we found that the perceptual difference between white–gold perceivers (n1 = 24, 12 women, Mage = 25.4 years) and blue–black perceivers (n2 = 24, 12 women, Mage = 24.3 years) decreased significantly when the illumination information provided by the original digital photo was reduced by means of image scrambling (Experiment 1). This indicates that the illumination information is one potentially important factor contributing to the color ambiguity of #TheDress—possibly by amplification of a slight principal difference in psychophysics of color perception which the two observer groups showed for abstract uniformly colored fields displaying a white–blue ambiguity (Experiment 2).

Stripping #The Dress: the importance of contextual information on inter-individual differences in colour perception

“…The frequency of particular viewer types varies between studies (Chetverikov & Ivanchei, 2016;González Martín-Moro et al, 2018;Karlsson & Allwood, 2016;Wallisch, 2017). Using an unconstrained colour term choice methodology in the current study, we report an approximately even split between B&B and W&G viewers (similar to Aston & Hurlbert, 2017;Chetverikov & Ivanchei, 2016;Hesslinger & Carbon, 2016;Karlsson & Allwood, 2016;Schlaffke et al, 2015;Vemuri et al, 2016;Winkler et al, 2015). We further confirm that several individuals reported seeing the ambiguous Dress picture as B&Br (Aston & Hurlbert, 2017;Lafer-Sousa et al, 2015;Mahroo et al, 2017;Wallisch, 2017;Witzel et al, 2017).…”

“…A priori, our study was not designed to explain how context affects colour perception of the ambiguous Dress image. To this goal, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the Dress illusion (e.g., Dixon & Shapiro, 2017;Hesslinger & Carbon, 2016;Witzel et al, 2017). Nevertheless, our results would invite for further investigation of contrast information (i.e., contrast between light and dark parts of the ambiguous Dress picture) as a potential explanatory factor for the Dress illusion.…”

“…Because these previous studies analysed colour matches using different colour models, we could not use their results to formulate more precise predictions. For Jonauskaite et al (in press) 10 -10 -contextualization, we could expect that decontextualization disrupts the Dress illusion because 1) different viewer types have different interpretation of the background on the ambiguous Dress picture (Chetverikov & Ivanchei, 2016) and 2) scrambling of the ambiguous Dress picture reduces the difference in perceived "blueness" on the ambiguous Dress picture between viewer types (Hesslinger & Carbon, 2016). If background information was more important, we could expect the differences between viewer types to disappear in both decontextualized conditions (patches and strips).…”

“…In the initial Internet survey of about three million respondents, 68% of the respondents indicated seeing the ambiguous Dress picture as W&G and 32% of the respondents as B&B in a forced-choice situation (Holderness, 2015). Subsequent studies reported a higher proportion of W&G viewers (Dixon & Shapiro, 2017;Mahroo et al, 2017;Moccia et al, 2016;Wallisch, 2017;Witzel, Racey, & O'Regan, 2017), a higher proportion of B&B viewers (Chetverikov & Ivanchei, 2016;Lafer-Sousa et al, 2015), or an equal split between the two viewer types (Aston & Hurlbert, 2017;Chetverikov & Ivanchei, 2016;Hesslinger & Carbon, 2016;Karlsson & Allwood, 2016;Schlaffke et al, 2015;Vemuri et al, 2016;Winkler, Spillmann, Werner, & Webster, 2015) using forced-choice and free naming paradigms. In studies that went beyond the possibility of two viewer types, mainly using freenaming paradigms to assess the colours of the ambiguous Dress picture, an intermediate variant of the Dress perception emerged -participants reported seeing the Dress as blue and brown/gold (B&Br) (Aston & Hurlbert, 2017;Lafer-Sousa et al, 2015;Mahroo et al, 2017;Wallisch, 2017;Witzel et al, 2017).…”

Explaining #TheShoe based on the optimal color hypothesis: The role of chromaticity vs. luminance distribution in ambiguous image

“…Figure S1 in conditions, or sufficient conditions. For example, the spatial structure was shown to be 337 important in #theDress phenomenon (Hesslinger & Carbon, 2016;Jonauskaite et al, 338 2018). In any case, one advantage to having a computational model is that we can 339 theoretically test whether a newly generated image is likely to induce a bi-stable percept.…”