Effects of eccentricity on color contrast

Abstract

Using near-threshold stimuli, human color sensitivity has been shown to decrease across the visual field, likely due in part to physiological differences between the fovea and periphery. It remains unclear to what extent this holds true for suprathreshold stimuli. The current study used suprathreshold contrast matching to examine how perceived contrast varies with eccentricity along the cardinal axes in a cone-opponent space. Our data show that, despite increasing stimulus size in the periphery, the LM axis stimuli were still perceived as reduced in contrast, whereas the S axis perceived contrast was observed to increase with eccentricity.