Main description:

Colours are increasingly important in our daily life, but how did colour vision evolve? How have colours been made, used and talked about in different cultures and tasks? How do various species of animals see colours? Which physical stimuli allow us to see colours and by which physiological mechanisms are they perceived? How and why do people differ in their colour perceptions? In answering these questions and others, this book offers an unusually broad account of the complex phenomenon of colour and colour vision. The book's broad and accessible approach gives it wide appeal and it will serve as a useful coursebook for upper-level undergraduate students studying psychology, particularly cognitive neuroscience and visual perception courses, as well as for students studying colour vision as part of biology, medicine, art and architecture courses.

Contents:

1. Colour vision in everyday life; 2. The signals of colours: light and wavelengths; 3. Colours and viewing conditions: not only local wavelengths; 4. Our biological hardware: eye and brain; 5. Eyes with unconventional properties: the 'red-green blinds'; 6. Other kinds of unconventional colour vision; 7. Colour vision in different species of animals.