Perceived Color, Induction Effects, and Opponent-Response Mechanisms

The study of sensory processes may take either of two main approaches. In the one, the physiological properties of specific sensory anatomical structures and structure groups are determined and analyzed. This is the line of attack of most of the contributors to this symposium. In the other approach, which is the one that our own work takes, the psychophysical properties of the sensory systems are determined and analyzed, by recording specific behavioral indices of perceptual response to controlled sensory stimulation. With sufficient experimental ingenuity such behavioral studies can be carried out on any form of animal. We shall be concerned here with the human species, whose behavioral repertory includes verbal report, an extremely valuable index of sensory response and discrimination. When the psychologist or psychophysicist attempts to assemble into a coherent picture the multitude of facts that have been established about human color vision he soon finds that he needs an integrating conceptual scheme for the way in which the physiological mechanism seems to be functioning. The