Higher order color mechanisms: A critical review

A large number of studies, using a wide variety of experimental techniques, have investigated the “higher-order” color mechanisms proposed by Krauskopf and colleagues in 1986. Results reviewed here come from studies of chromatic discrimination at threshold, habituation, classification images, spatial alignment and orientation effects, and noise masking. The bulk of the evidence has been taken to support the existence of multiple, linear color mechanisms in addition to (or after) the three putative low-level cardinal mechanisms. But there remain disconcerting inconsistencies in the results of noise masking experiments, and the results of chromatic discrimination experiments clearly show that there are a very limited number of labeled-line mechanisms near threshold. No consensus on higher order mechanisms has been reached even after more than 20 years of study.