Serial vs. Parallel Processing
• Serial Processing
– Process items one after another
– Conscious processing
• Parallel processing
– Simultaneously processing
– Unconscious processing
– The brain divides what it sees into four components
• color, motion, form, and depth.
• Brain then combines these into one image
that you see and comprehend.
Theories of Color Vision
Color like all aspects of vision, resides not in
the object, but in the theater of our brains.
Objects are everything but the color we see.
Trichromatic (three-color) Theory
• Cones are sensitive to red, green & blue light
Opponent-Process Theory
Opponent-Process Theory
Opponent-Process Theory
• Color is processed in the thalamus in opponent
pairs of color:
–Red-green, yellow-blue, black-white
–Light that stimulates one half of the pair
inhibits the other half
Afterimages
If we view colored stimuli for an extended
period of time, we will see an afterimage in a
complementary color when we view something
white.
• Castle
Colorblindness
If missing a pair of receptors, have difficulty
seeing those hues
–Dichromatic color blindness
–can’t see either red/green or blue/yellow
–Monochromatic color blindness
–can only see shades of gray
Additive vs. Subtractive Color
Mixing