Colour constancy assessed by asymmetric simultaneous colour matching usually reveals limited levels of performance in the unadapted eye. Yet observers can readily discriminate illuminant changes on a scene from changes in the spectral reflectances of the surfaces making up the scene. This ability is probably based on judgements of relational colour constancy, in turn based on the physical stability of spatial ratios of cone excitations under illuminant changes. Evidence is presented suggesting that the ability to detect violations in relational colour constancy depends on temporal transient cues. Because colour constancy and relational colour constancy are closely connected, it should be possible to improve estimates of colour constancy by introducing similar transient cues into the matching task. To test this hypothesis, an experiment was performed in which observers made surface-colour matches between patterns presented in the same position in an alternating sequence with period 2 s or, as a control, presented simultaneously, side-by-side. The degree of constancy was significantly higher for sequential presentation, reaching 87% for matches averaged over 20 observers. Temporal cues may offer a useful source of information for making colour-constancy judgements.

中文翻译：

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时间线索如何帮助颜色恒常性。

通过不对称同时颜色匹配评估的颜色恒常性通常揭示了未适应眼睛的有限性能水平。然而，观察者可以很容易地将场景中的光源变化与构成场景的表面的光谱反射率的变化区分开来。这种能力可能是基于对相关颜色恒常性的判断，进而基于光照变化下锥体激发空间比的物理稳定性。提出的证据表明，检测相关颜色恒常性违规的能力取决于时间瞬态线索。因为颜色恒常性和关系颜色恒常性密切相关，所以应该可以通过在匹配任务中引入类似的瞬态线索来改进颜色恒常性的估计。为了检验这个假设，进行了一项实验，在该实验中，观察者以 2 秒的交替顺序在相同位置呈现的图案之间进行表面颜色匹配，或者作为对照，同时并排呈现。连续呈现的一致性程度明显更高，平均超过 20 名观察者的匹配率达到 87%。时间线索可以为做出颜色恒常性判断提供有用的信息来源。