Perceptual Development: Color and Contrast

Spatial contrast is arguably the most fundamental variable in vision. It enables us, among other things, to discriminate figure from ground, to find the edges of objects so that those objects can be recognized by their shapes, to match regions in the two eyes to enable depth perception, and to segregate regions in the visual image that differ in texture. Without the ability to perceive contrast, these fundamental aspects of visual perception would be all but impossible. This entry focuses on the development of spatial contrast vision and color vision.

One can also make the argument that color plays an important role in many of the same aspects of visual perception. Regions in the visual image that have the same texture but different colors can be ...