Memory isn鈥檛 what it was
The impression that in the good old days the skies were bluer, the sun was much warmer and the food was much tastier may be a necessary consequence of the processes of human memory. This is suggested by some simple experiments that have been carried out by a team of technologists in New York who have recently described their work in the Journal of the Optical Society of America.
They shone a coloured light onto a screen for 5 seconds, and after a lapse of 5 more seconds subjects had to adjust the controls on the coloured light generator to try to recapture the colour they had seen.
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Although the subjects were all professional colour technologists they consistently set up matching second colours from memory which were markedly more saturated 鈥� or deeper 鈥� and brighter than the originals had been.
One possible explanation for this is a process known as adaptation. This occurs when the observer has longer to look at the second colour as they try to match it to the first, than they did with the original colour, so that the natural decline in sensitivity that occurs when viewing a colour becomes a significant factor. Because the sensitivity declines as they look at the second colour, they try to brighten it up constantly to match the initial reaction to the first colour.
Another theory, and the one which the authors favour, is that the memory of the test colour is somehow strengthened in the mind of the observer, on the principle that impressive things, and things upon which they are expected to concentrate, are well-remembered while trivial things are not. This view was supported by the observation that the most arresting and attractive colours were even more exaggerated during matching by memory than the dull, unimpressive colours.
From The New 杏吧原创, 14 February 1957