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First published online August 9, 2007
Journal of Experimental Biology 210, 2795-2800 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
doi: 10.1242/jeb.007377
Colour perception in a dichromat
1 Department of Cell and Organism Biology, Vision Group, Lund University,
Helgonavägen 3, S-22362 Lund, Sweden
2 Department of Plant Protection Biology, The Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences, Sundsvägen 14, S-230 53 Alnarp, Sweden
* Author for correspondence (e-mail: lina.roth{at}cob.lu.se)
Accepted 6 June 2007
| Summary |
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We trained horses to different colour combinations in a two-choice behavioural experiment and tested their responses to the training and test colours. The horses chose colours according to their similarity/relationship to rewarded and unrewarded training colours. There was no evidence for a categorical boundary at the neutral point or elsewhere.
This study suggests that dichromats perceive their chromatic space as a continuous scale of colours, treating the colour at the neutral point as any other colour they can distinguish.
Key words: colour vision, dichromat, horse, mammal, chromatic space
| Introduction |
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Even though many behavioural studies have confirmed colour vision, it is
difficult to establish how dichromats perceive colours in their colour space.
The comparison of the short-wavelength-sensitive (S) and the
long-wavelength-sensitive (L) cone gives rise to a two-dimensional colour
space and to a one-dimensional chromatic space when brightness is excluded. In
this one-dimensional space, colours that only stimulate the L cone type will
be presented at one end and colours that mainly give rise to a response of the
S cone type at the other end. In between, there will be a so-called `neutral
point' where both cone types are stimulated in the same ratio as
(human-defined) white light would do. The wavelength that corresponds to the
neutral point cannot be distinguished from achromatic colours, such as white
and grey, which are defined, according to Wyszecki and Stiles
(Wyszecki and Stiles, 1982
),
as `perceived colour devoid of hue'.
In a trichromatic colour space, grey shades are interpreted as
qualitatively different from chromatic colours, such as green and red, and it
is beautifully seen in Jones and colleagues' study on domestic chicks
(Jones et al., 2001
) that this
is valid for animals other than humans. Chicks are tetrachromats, but by
excluding UV light from the experimental situation the chicks were left with
trichromatic colour vision, where all isoluminant colours can be visualized in
a triangle with a `grey point' in the centre. The trichromatic chicks in Jones
and colleagues' experiment were trained to two similar colours as positive
stimuli. When tested with a colour in between both, the chicks preferred the
intermediate colour (Fig. 1A).
For example, chicks trained to blue and red preferred the intermediate purple
colour, indicating generalization. However, chicks trained to yellow and blue,
which lie on opposite sides of the grey point, refused to choose grey,
suggesting that they do not perceive grey as an intermediate colour between
blue and yellow. Thus, they do not generalize over the grey point but treat
colours on opposite sides as belonging to different categories.
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To investigate whether dichromats perceive their neutral point as
qualitatively different from chromatic colours, we performed two experiments
on horses (Experiments I and II) similar to those performed on the chicks
(Jones et al., 2001
). As a
control we performed Experiment I (Fig.
1D) with both positive colours located on the same side of the
neutral point. In Experiment II (Fig.
1E) we tested Hypothesis 1
(Fig. 1B), and two positive
colours were therefore situated on either side of the neutral point. In both
experiments intermediate colours were presented in tests to reveal whether the
horses generalized between the positive stimuli. If the horses generalized and
treated the intermediate colours similarly in both experiments, it would
suggest that there is no categorical boundary at the neutral point.
Also, if Hypothesis 2 is accurate, the continuum of colours should allow
dichromats to learn colours in a relative manner, which has been indicated
already in Hemmi's study on the dichromatic tammar wallaby
(Hemmi, 1999
). Hemmi trained
two wallabies to distinguish between two monochromatic lights and he clearly
showed that they have colour vision. He then continued to train both wallabies
to choose the colour of longer wavelength. For example, when 500 nm and 480 nm
were presented, 500 nm was treated as the positive stimulus. In combination
with 520 nm, it was treated as the negative stimulus. The wallabies obviously
learned this relative task and, in Experiment III, we tested whether horses
are able to do the same.
| Materials and methods |
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Stimuli
Stimuli were of size 15x21 cm and printed on white Munken Pure Copy
paper (Arctic Paper Munkedals AB, Munkedal, Sweden) by an Epson Stylus Photo
printer 2100. During experiments the stimuli papers were kept in transparent
plastic cases, which did not influence their reflectance of light but made
them resistant to dirt and moisture.
The reflectance of all stimuli S(
) was measured using an
S2000 Spectrometer (Ocean Optics, Dunedin, FL, USA), and the standard daylight
spectra (D65) (Wyszecki and Stiles,
1982
) was used as light spectrum I(
). The
spectral sensitivity of photoreceptor I, Ri(
), was
calculated from the horse peak sensitivities (428 and 539 nm)
(Carroll et al., 2001
) with the
Stavenga–Smits–Hoenders rhodopsin template
(Stavenga et al., 1993
). The
relative number of quanta absorbed by the horse's cone types
(Qi) was calculated using
Eqn 1. No significant amount of
UV light was reflected from the stimuli:
![]() | (1) |
The six colours (two blue colours, two grey colours, green and yellow) are named as they appear to humans, and the wavelengths they correspond to for the horses are given in Figs 1, 2.
Apparatus
The dual-choice discrimination apparatus, similar to those used on horses
by Geisbauer et al. (Geisbauer et al.,
2004
) and Macuda and Timney
(Macuda and Timney, 1999
), was
166 cm wide and 160 cm high. One door, 30x30 cm in size, was placed on
each side of a divider that was sticking out 40 cm, forcing the horse to make
its choice of the two doors (Fig.
3). The apparatus was painted in light grey.
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For the training sessions we trained one horse at a time and presented each horse with 20 training combinations per day, each consisting of one positive stimulus and one negative stimulus. All horses were trained in a dual-choice situation. During the training sessions the door with the positive stimulus was unlocked, allowing the horse to reach carrot pieces as a reward. The door with the negative stimulus was locked but there were carrots behind it to avoid differences in odour cues. For all experiments, the position of the positive stimulus was altered in a pseudo-random manner, but it was shown equally often on the left and the right side.
In total, seven horses were trained in three different experiments. Five
horses were trained to two positive colours (Experiments I and II). They
received the same amount of training with both positive stimuli, each in
combination with the same negative stimulus. Two horses were trained to one
positive colour and one negative colour (Experiment III). After they had
reached the learning criterion of 75% correct choices over three subsequent
days, test stimuli were presented to the horses. The number of test
presentations differed depending on the horse's performance. The horse had to
chose correctly in 3–6 training presentations in sequence before tests
were performed. This procedure made it impossible for the horse to learn when
a test would appear. During tests, both doors were locked and no reward could
be obtained. Directly after a test we continued the training. Binominal tests
(Rohlf and Sokal, 1995
) for
each individual animal were used to evaluate the statistical significance of
the results.
| Results |
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In order to test whether the horses had simply learned to avoid the negative colour, one horse was presented with a novel blue colour (black circle). This blue colour corresponded to an even shorter wavelength than the negative training stimulus and was presented together with the test colour, green (Fig. 4F). Here, the horse confidently chose the green stimulus (red circle), again implying that it generalized between the positive training colours.
Experiment II – positive stimuli on both sides of the neutral point
Next, we investigated whether horses can generalize between two colours on
opposite sides of the neutral point. In Experiment II, three horses were
trained to discriminate blue and green as positive stimuli (red `+';
Fig. 1E), from a negative
yellow stimulus (black `–'). All horses reached the learning criterion
although they seemed to have more difficulty in distinguishing green and
yellow than blue and yellow (Fig.
4G,H). They thereby showed the same pattern as the horses in
Experiment I, reaching a somewhat lower choice frequency for more similar
colours.
After having reached the learning criterion, they were presented with tests similar to those in Experiment I. The first test consisted of one positive training colour and a new test colour (red circle; Fig. 1E), grey, corresponding to their neutral point. All three horses chose this test colour, grey, as if it was a positive stimulus, clearly indicating generalization between two colours on opposite sides of the neutral point. In addition, they showed a preference for the colour most different from the negative yellow stimulus. When tested with blue and grey (Fig. 4I), all three horses strongly preferred the blue stimulus, i.e. the colour corresponding to the shortest wavelength. In tests with green and grey (Fig. 4J), the difference was not significant according to binominal tests.
When tested with both positive training stimuli (Fig. 4K), all three horses significantly preferred blue to green. These results again show that the horses choose in a relative manner, preferring the shortest wavelength. In a final test, two horses were given the choice between the test colour, grey, and the negative stimulus, yellow (Fig. 4L). Both horses preferred grey, again suggesting that they had learned to generalize between the positive colours, to the neutral point. The similarities with the results from Experiment I clearly show that the neutral point is not treated any differently from other colours that the dichromatic horse can perceive.
Experiment III – relative colour learning
In Experiment III, we trained and tested two horses with the goal to better
understand whether they learn colour in a relative manner. Green was the
positive stimulus (red `+') and grey the negative (black `–'). Both
horses learned to discriminate these two training stimuli, which required that
they chose the colour corresponding to the longer wavelength
(Fig. 5A).
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In the second test, we presented the negative stimulus, grey, together with a novel blue colour. Here, both horses were very reluctant to choose. It often took a long time for them to choose but grey was most often preferred to blue (Fig. 5C). This was a critical test for the horses. Even though they had learned that grey was negative, in the test it was still the colour corresponding to the longer wavelength. The result from Experiment III, besides confirming relative colour learning, again suggests that horses treat grey as any other colour in their colour space.
| Discussion |
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The results of Experiments I and II show that horses generalize to a novel
test colour located between the two positive stimuli from the training
procedure. In contrast to the domestic chicks tested by Jones et al.
(Jones et al., 2001
), the
horses did not always prefer the intermediate colour when presented together
with a positive stimulus. The choices made by the horses depended on which
colour differed most from the negative stimulus. The results of all three
experiments suggest that the horses learn colours in a relative manner.
However, relative colour learning does not exclude the recognition of specific
colours, which is seen in Experiment III, where the horses only reluctantly
chose the negative stimulus, grey, when it was presented with blue (green was
the positive stimulus).
The most obvious difference between the horses and the chicks
(Jones et al., 2001
) is their
behaviour in tests that involve the neutral point in horses or the grey point
in chicks. Chicks did not generalize between colours on opposite sides of this
point whereas the horses did in Experiment II. Our results from Experiments II
and III suggest that the dichromats treat grey like any other colour that they
can perceive in their chromatic space. Their neutral point does not split up
their chromatic space into two colour categories, as suggested earlier
(Jacobs and Deegan, 1994
;
Vienot et al., 1995
). Instead,
our results confirm Hemmi's findings on the tammar wallaby
(Hemmi, 1999
) that dichromatic
mammals, such as the horse, perceive a continuous scale of colours. In
addition, recent studies show that human dichromats use the term `green' for
colours at the neutral point (Wachtler et
al., 2004
), again indicating that the neutral point does not
divide the chromatic space and that dichromats can perceive a chromatic colour
at the neutral point. Our results, together with Hemmi's and Wachtler's
studies, make it very likely that these conclusions apply to dichromats in
general.
Grzimek previously performed a study where he showed that horses could
distinguish grey from blue, green, yellow and red colours
(Grzimek, 1952
). However, in
later studies (Macuda and Timney,
1999
; Pick et al.,
1994
; Smith and Goldman,
1999
) some horses seemed to have difficulties in discriminating
green, and sometimes even yellow, from grey. Given that previous studies have
tested different colours versus grey shades, it strongly depends on
which green has been used, since different colours that human perceive as
green can be located quite close or far away from the neutral point of the
horse. This is probably one of the reasons for the differences in the results
and makes it difficult to compare the studies. In general, if dichromats do
not perceive grey as qualitatively different from red, blue, green or yellow,
a better test of colour vision would be to test colours different from the
neutral point instead of the classic grey versus colour tests.
| Acknowledgments |
|---|
| References |
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