Swiping colors in virtual reality: How stable are color category borders?

Area of Science:

• Visual perception
• Cognitive psychology
• Computational neuroscience

Background:

• Human color perception balances continuous hue discrimination with discrete linguistic categories.
• The stability of color category boundaries is debated: fixed anchors versus dynamic adaptation (range effect).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the stability of color category boundaries under dynamic stimulus conditions.
• To determine if perceptual color category borders shift with recent stimulus distributions.

Main Methods:

• Adapted a match-to-sample paradigm into an immersive VR videogame.
• Participants matched saber color to cube stripes in a fast-paced task.
• Manipulated stimulus range to test shifts in blue-green and pink-purple category boundaries.

Main Results:

• Color category borders showed a consistent partial shift towards the shifted stimulus range.
• This shift was independent of response proportion and occurred even for hues without clear category boundaries.
• Findings suggest immediate stimulus statistics heavily influence judgments in rapid decision-making.

Conclusions:

• Color category boundaries are not entirely fixed perceptual anchors.
• Dynamic adaptation to stimulus statistics plays a significant role in color perception, especially in active tasks.
• Linguistic color categories may have a limited role in rapid, matching-based visual tasks.