Talk:Contrast effect

message: 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)
thread_title: Untitled

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Text in Wikipedia should be able to stand on its own feet. If someone with no knowledge of a topic cannot understand an article then it is the article that should be changed. Perhaps some of the elaboration in these discussion pages could be added to the article. And if an editor is going to use his or her credentials to justify certain edits, then I think readers should know who that editor is, so they can assess these credentials. That means signing posts and using a Wikipedia name that allows readers to find out who the editor really is. Robert P. O'Shea (talk) 05:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: I too, did not experience the demonstration as it was originally worded. When I looked at upper disks then shifted my attention, without moving my eyes, to the lower disks, I experienced the lower disks as the same colour. What I did see was that occasionally one of the lower disks disappeared, an example of the Troxler effect. I reworded the instructions to yield a perceptual experience that accords with that claimed, but I suspect this is not what the original editor had in mind. There is certainly a simple explanation of the perceptual effect involving afterimages. Robert P. O'Shea (talk) 06:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Successive contrast 

message: How is the contrast effect related to neural adaptation? Consider this experiment:
:Have three buckets of water, one hot, one cold, and one lukewarm. Place one hand in the hot water and one in the cold water, and wait for three minutes. Then place both hands in the lukewarm water. The hand previously in hot water will feel cold, and the hand previously in cold water will feel hot, even though they are both in the same temperature water.
Is this the contrast effect, neural adaptation, or both?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.171.3.126 (talk) 12:31, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's both. Contrast effect is the effect on perception. Neural adaption is the mechanism by which it occurs. MartinPoulter (talk) 23:22, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contrast effect, neural adaptation, and hot/cold/lukewarm water experiment. 

message: Substituted at 00:58, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment