Talk:Contrast effect
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6/17/2006 -- I'm the original poster of Contrast Effect. Thanks to those who corrected my spelling and other embarassments. However, the successive attempts to improve the definition of "normal" started to violate the basic structure of a proper abstract definition that separates the definition from specific examples and the examples given were compromising the generality of the original definition.
To wit: "(In this definition a "normal" perception is one free of immediate related context, greater or lesser, more appealing or less appealing.)"
First, there can never be a perception that is "free of immediate related context". All experience and performance have contexts and to suppose that a condition could be free of all immediate related context is confusing and supposes something extremely unlikely. Second, the basic definition carefully includes both perception and performance to cover the broad range of empirical observations in which contrast has been implicated, but the added supplemental definition of normal refers only to perception. Third, the insertion of "greater or lesser, more appealing or less appealing" is to insert examples into the abstract definition and confound that definition as I mentioned above. That's what the example paragraph does and it's unnecessary to redundantly insert them into the abstract definition.
My compromise with the urge to clarify is "(Here, normal perception or performance is that which would obtain in the absence of the comparison stimulus - i.e., one based on all previous experience.). I hope it scratches the itch without the messiness mentioned. Again, thanks for the corrections, but please study all implications of your suggested changes before posting.
Additionally, thanks for removing "Psychological theories" as a reference category. For others, a contrast effect is an empirical phenomenon that theories are designed to explain and is not, itself, a theory. There may be "theories of contrast" or "theories based on contrast", but this page is about the empirical phenomenon and it's ubiquity.
7/14/2007 -- I think this is a good article, but I have some trouble understanding the relevance of the second example (the one with the four circles). In my humble opinion, I do not see how it is an example of a cognitive bias, because the effect occurs in our eye, not in our brain. Our brain does not change its perception, the eye is making the illusion.
Maybe I am confused because I followed from the "list of cognitive biases" article.
Deersdrinkbeer 17:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 03:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
3/1/2008 -- Original poster here again... I did not insert the sections on simultaneous and successive contrasts at the bottom of the page. Those were added by another party and I recommend that someone more adept at Wikipedia editing than I - remove them from this page. I am uncomfortable with their presence on the same page for several reasons. They fall back into the habit that I warned against above in confusing definitions and examples. That is, by their titles, they imply that they are definitions of simultaneous contrast and successive contrast when they are not - they are only one example each of a very specific visual effect (and the second, while a successive effect to be sure, is not even a contrast effect in the sense defined here. It may be remotely related to "color contrast" by the hue of the illusion, but not the contrast effect being described on this page). Even if the second were a contrast effect and both were more properly labeled (e. g., "Simultaneous Visual Contrast Example" etc.), they would illustrate only one each (visual perceptions) of a wide range of simultaneous and successive effects and create the mis-perception that simultaneous and successive contrast effects have only to do with visual-perceptual effects. A long list of other sensory (e. g. tactile, auditory, olfactory etc), cognitive and performance examples of contrast effect would be required for a balanced presentation of examples. Again, the whole point of the page is to stress the ubiquity of the phenomenon of contrast effect and grasping on to a single narrow example - to give a false sense of understanding - defeats that purpose. Someone, please remove those examples to a more appropriate page.
Regarding the 7/14/2007 comment above about cognitive bias and the second visual example being an ocular/retinal (v. cognitive) effect: See my comment above about the second visual example. I agree that the visual examples don't belong on this page. However, in any case and as I discussed in my first post, the contrast effects being described on this page are empirical phenomena (i. e., without necessary reference to causal or theorized causal mechanism(s) be they eye, ear, muscular feedback, or brain). Digression: If we were discussing causal mechanisms regarding vision, I would say that the current conceptualization of seeing or vision (and thus, perception and perceptual "illusion") is that it is a function performed more actively by the brain than passively by the "eye" (older and wiser folk have always viewed the eye as only an outgrowth of the brain to provide fuzzy input, but that's a different thread). Further, contrary to older conceptualizations that limited vision to the eye, nuclei and occipital lobe, more recent brain studies indicate that substantially larger portions of the human brain - up to 1/3 - are directly involved in "creating" our vision. That is, our eyes and neural circuitry don't "see" passively, but instead, the brain actively creates most of the visual world we perceive from past impressions stored in and beyond the occipital lobe while the eyes provide relatively sparse cues which (with some processing) elicit a correct enough representation (hopefully) of the reality before us. From this POV, the objective of vision is to actively create and project a full and accurate representation or "visual understanding" of the world (dreams are the projection going on without guidance or tracking from the closed eyes, other senses, or conscious control) and "illusions" are not illusions or errors of visual judgment, but our brain interpreting the sparse input of the eye in a way that makes the most sense in the most number of cases. So, you may be right in asserting that the color illusion in the second example is wholly a function of the "eye" (cone-pigment bleaching or retinal neural fatigue? - I don't know but, likely, someone does}, but I would speculate that there is a "cognitive" component to it and, possibly, a substantial one.
- I don't know anything about this phenomenon: I restored the text because the above IP deleted it without giving a reason. It doesn't matter who adds or deletes text: it stands or falls on its merits. Someone please source this, or let's have discussion between people who know what this page is talking about. Nyttend (talk) 23:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
