Color in action: how the visual system uses color to guide movements

Abstract

Color perception is shaped by both the temporal dynamics of sensory processing and the behavioral context in which perception occurs. This work investigates how color information contributes to perceptual decisions and visually guided behavior across two complementary studies. The first study examined the temporal characteristics of color processing using eye movements as a measure of perceptual decision-making. Participants selected the brighter of two equiluminant colored targets, one blue and one yellow, using both saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. While early responses were primarily driven by luminance, longer-latency eye movements showed an increasing preference for the blue target, indicating that slowly processed S-cone signals contribute to perceived color brightness over time. These findings demonstrate how the temporal dynamics of different cone mechanisms shape color-related perceptual decisions and visually guided behavior. The second study addressed the challenge of efficiently measuring color discrimination across the three-dimensional color space by developing a gamified virtual reality paradigm. Participants performed rapid color discrimination judgments while actively engaging with a virtual environment. The resulting thresholds were consistent with those obtained using more traditional psychophysical methods, while the gamified approach enabled faster and more sustained data collection without compromising perceptual performance. The results further confirmed that color discrimination varies substantially across color space, with sensitivity depending on the direction of color change. Together, these studies provide both conceptual and methodological advances in the study of color perception. They demonstrate how the temporal dynamics of sensory signals influence perceptual behavior and how immersive, action-oriented methods can facilitate large-scale measurements of perceptual sensitivity. More broadly, the findings highlight the importance of studying visual perception within the context of behavior and action.