Color number and texture perception

The color gamut of visual scenes can encompass a multitude of hues, but how many distinct hues are individuals aware of? We examined this question in the context of texture perception, with a grid of stimuli composed of random colors chosen from color sets varying from two to six different hues or saturations. In a behavioral experiment, participants had to discriminate between differences in the number of hues present by identifying which of four color grids included a larger number of different colors. Color number discrimination was also assessed neurally, using electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency tagging, wherein a texture with an extra hue was shown as an "oddball," once per second, in a stream of textures presented at six images per second. In both experiments, two versus three texture contrasts were readily distinguished, yet performance fell rapidly when the set size increased further. The results suggest that sensitivity to the density of the color gamut defining a texture is very restricted.