Color as a Variable in the Judgment of Size

Particular aspects of perceptual responses have been experimentally anchored to various points along the stimulus-organism continuum. Though theories have differed in their region of reference (peripheral, central, distal), a major conceptual pattern has been traditional: psychological variables are correlated with their physical or physiological parallel. Theories of spatial perceptions are, for example, framed in terms of objective size or the spatial extent of the retinal or brain process. Within the past two decades, however, another trend in perceptual experimentation has become prominent. Striking relationships have been demonstrated between selected characteristics of perception and variables generally regarded to be of a widely different sort-values, needs, drives. A relatively neglected problem, it seems, concerns the effects on perceptions of variables in between these two extremes-of being parallel to and of being drastically different from the response-dimension under scrutiny. One may, for example, raise the question: Do variables like wave-length or intensityproperties of the physical stimulus other than spatial extent-affect perceived size?