As human beings we all can perceive the same incident or occurrence differently than each other. So what is reality? Is one person wrong and the other person right? The example I would like to focus on now is something that took the internet by storm a couple of years ago and is still much debated today. Is it a white and gold dress or black and blue dress? Bottom-Up Processing is at play in determining the color of the dress. What we see is light rays that are transformed into a sensory experience via the retina, which travels to the optic nerve and creates an electrical signal, then sends this signal to the processing center in the brain. Once at the processing center in the brain it determines what color we perceive and thus creates our version of reality (Goldstein, 2011, p. 38, 50).
How we perceive the color of the dress depends on if we see it as a bright background light with a shadow cast over the dress or as very bright light making the dress appear lighter when it is actually darker (Corum, 2015). The cornea is responsible for letting light rays into the eye, in fact, 65 percent of the eye’s refractory ability to reflect light from an object comes from the (center of the) cornea (Davidson, 2015). That being said whether or not we perceive the dress as black and blue or white and gold is determined by top-down processing, whether or not we perceive it as a shadow cast over the dress or a bright light reflected onto. Since it is just a picture online, our brains use prior knowledge to determine the color, for example, when a shadow is cast over an object it appears darker or when a bright light is shined on an object it appears lighter (Goldstein, 2011, p. 57).
The color we see an object as is the color that is reflected off the item. For example, if all colors are reflected off an item then we see white, but if all colors are absorbed by an item then we see black (Idaho Public Television, 2016). In the dress example when we see a bright light coming from behind the brighter light makes the dress appear darker (i.e. black and blue). But when we see a shadow cast over the dress the darkness of the shadow makes the dress appear lighter (i.e. white and gold). Color constancy is the ability of color to appear the same in different contexts (i.e. a lot of light or little to no light). Color is subjective, since it can change color in different environments (Brainard, 2004). In Image 3 (link at bottom) the dress is seen as definitely black and blue, with other context clues such as the fair skin color of the woman wearing the dress, the white wedding dress of the bride, and the dark curtains in the background. With all these things to compare the color of the dress too, it makes it obvious its true color (Corum, 2015).
Whether or not the dress is black and blue or white and gold is still a heavily debated topic because everyone believes that the way they see it is real or reality. The fact that they perceive this as reality makes them believe that something is wrong with the other person who sees a different perception. When viewing the photograph, I see it differently because sometimes I see it as white and gold and other times I see it as black and blue. Since my reality changes I understand how different people can see the dress differently. Color constancy is at play and is not something that is 100 percent accurate, since other things can affect the color reflected by light off an object, such as colors reflected off other nearby objects and background light. Top-down processing is also at play as we use clues from things we have previously seen to draw conclusions on the color of the dress, is it a shadow casts over a white and gold dress or a bright background light reflected onto a black and blue dress. So in conclusion, reality is not something that always holds true to everyone, but is rather subjective and determined by the individual.
References
Brainard, B. (2004). “Color constancy: David Brainard Lab” [PDF Document]. Retrieved from
Click to access ColorConstancySage.pdf
Corum, J. (2015, Feb. 27). “Is that dress white and gold or blue and black”. New York Times. Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/28/science/white-or-blue-dress.html
Davidson, M. W. (2015). Human Vision and Color Perception. Molecular Expressions. Optical Microscopy
Primer : Physics of Light and Color. Retrieved from
https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/humanvisionintro.html
Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience
(Vol. 3). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Idaho Public Television. (2016). “Light & color: Facts”. Retrieved from
http://idahoptv.org/sciencetrek/topics/light_and_color/facts.cfm