Cone mechanisms underlying the color discrimination of deutan color deficients

An alternation method of color matching was used to obtain a series of extended Rayleigh matches from several deutan color deficients with varying degrees of color discrimination. With large stimulus fields there were differences in the matches made by observers with good color discrimination and the matches made by observers with poor color discrimination. The matches made by observers with poor discrimination could not be modeled with normal cone action spectra. When the field size was reduced the matches of all observers were quite similar and could be modeled with two cone action spectra that were normal in shape and separated by approximately 5 nm. Results suggest that individual differences in ability to discriminate color among deutan observers are not solely related to differences in the cone action spectra.