10.5061/DRYAD.BCC2FQZC5
Penacchio, Olivier
0000-0002-1544-2405
University of St Andrews
Haigh, Sarah
University of Nevada Reno
Ross, Xortia
University of Nevada Reno
Ferguson, Rebecca
University of Nevada Reno
Wilkins, Arnold
University of Essex
Visual discomfort and variations in chromaticity in art and nature
Dryad
dataset
2021
visual neuroscience, perception
NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research
Foundation*
26282
R15 AREA award from the National Institute of Mental Health*
122935
NSF EPSCoR grant*
1632849
2021-12-09T00:00:00Z
2021-12-09T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.711064
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4672636
418318135 bytes
4
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Visual discomfort is related to the statistical regularity of visual
images. The contribution of luminance contrast to visual discomfort is
well understood and can be framed in terms of a theory of efficient coding
of natural stimuli, and linked to metabolic demand. While colour is
important in our interaction with nature, the effect of colour on visual
discomfort has received less attention. In this study, we build on the
established association between visual discomfort and differences in
chromaticity across space. We average the local differences in
chromaticity in an image and show that this average is a good predictor of
visual discomfort from the image. It accounts for part of the variance
left unexplained by variations in luminance. We show that the local
chromaticity difference in uncomfortable stimuli is high compared to that
typical in natural scenes, except in particular infrequent conditions such
as the arrangement of colourful fruits against foliage. Overall, our study
discloses a new link between visual ecology and discomfort whereby
discomfort arises when adaptive perceptual mechanisms are overstimulated
by specific classes of stimuli rarely found in nature.
This repository contains the raw data for the three experiments in the
paper, Matlab code to compute the colour metric ("average
chromaticity difference") and to recolour the stimuli as done in
Experiment 3, the computed values of the metric for all the experments,
and R code for the statistical analysis of the three experiments (please
see readMe.txt for details).