Scientists believe that when we see and perceive the color yellow, it also actually changes with the seasons changing from dull winter grays to lush summer greens, like a cycle.
Scientists from the University of York in Britain conducted a new study to better understand how humans process color in the world and how humans are able to identify the primary colors, namely red, yellow, and blue including complementary color, green.
However, researchers focused more on the color yellow due to its interesting quality of being consistent across populations meaning, almost all people agree on what yellow appears or seems to be, despite any differences when it comes to their visual perception.
Apparently for other colors, this perception of yellow is not unique with red, blue or green which makes for intriguing research. In this new study, scientists have theorized that in order to perceive a unique yellow or any changes in that visual sense, it does not depend on the human eye's biological abilities but rather, on the changing seasons that color the natural environment.
According to lead author of the study, Lauren Welbourne, their findings suggest that in between seasons, our vision continues to adapt to the natural changes occurring in the environment.
For example, during the summer, there is a massive amount of foliage that our visual sensory system had to adjust due to the exposure to more green. During the winter months, since there is less foliage present in the environment where the world appears more gray than usual, the human vision will adapt again and compensate for this that will also change our perception of yellow.
Welbourne describes this visual process to adjusting the color balance on the television.
The experiments were carried out during the months of June and January where 67 males and females were placed inside a dark chamber where their eyes adjusted to the low light levels. The participants were then asked to turn a dial on an instrument called colorimeter to adjust their perception of the perfect color yellow, without any hint of red or green.
The final settings were then recorded and revealed that there was indeed a difference between summer and winter of the average setting of yellow.
These new findings will help hopefully gain a better understanding of the complex workings of the human visual perception system which also marks the first time a study explored about natural seasons of the environment that affects the perception of color.
This study is published in the journal Current Biology.