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Updated: May 20, 2026

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Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
Basic color terms use by aged observers: lens aging and perceptual compensation.
Julio Lillo1, Humberto Moreira, Leticia Pérez del Tio
1Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. julillo@psi.ucm.es
The Spanish Journal of Psychology
|July 11, 2012
Summary
Aged individuals
Area of Science:
- Vision science
- Color perception
Background:
- Aging affects color perception, influencing how older adults use Basic Color Terms (BCTs).
- Understanding these changes is crucial for visual research and accessibility.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze BCT usage in aged individuals (normal and tritanomalous).
- To compare models predicting age-related color perception changes.
Main Methods:
- Two visual search tasks (mapping and best representative) were employed.
- Multidimensional scaling and BCT confusions were analyzed.
- Three predictive models (filtering without compensation, filtering with compensation, tritan lines) were compared.
Main Results:
- Model B (filtering with compensation) accurately predicted aged individuals' BCT performance (>90% explained variance).
- Significant differences in BCT usage were observed between aged and young participants.
Conclusions:
- Lens aging effects in older adults are partially compensated by a white normalization mechanism.
- The 'filtering with compensation' model best explains age-related changes in color term usage.
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