Accommodation and color

Abstract

Previous studies of the effects of color on the accommodation response are reviewed. The monocular, steady-state response to targets under various colors of illumination is investigated. It is shown that trained observers change their level of accommodation, when viewing a target at a constant distance, to compensate for the varying ocular longitudinal chromatic aberration as the color of the target is changed. Untrained subjects, however, may initially show inconsistent responses. Results in white and greeen are closely comparable. Dynamic aspects of these effects are illustrated and it is shown that the ocular longitudinal chromatic aberration increases slightly with accommodation. The results are related to current ideas on the accommodative system.