Abstract
Regarding the color vision of human being, the zone theory which combines the three-component and the opponent-color theories of color vision has become widely accepted.
As physiological fact, there exist several types of ganglion cells in the retina which have different sizes in the center-surround structure. Hence it is important to investigate the spatial characteristics of the color processing system.
In the present paper, the authors measure the spatial characteristics of the incremental threshold by using the two-color threshold method. The experimental results show that in the short- and long-wavelength ranges of the test stimulus, the color adaptation has dependency on the wavelength of the adaptive light, while, for the middle-wavelength stimulus, the it does not depend on the adaptation wavelength. It is not explained by the Stiles's π mechanism or a simple mutual interaction of the chromatic channel and the achromatic channels. Hence, the authors propose a five-stage model of the color adaptation which can explain the experimental results in a satisfactory manner.
