Investigating brightness perception in psychophysical experiments or computational models
Project Description
The perceived brightness of a surface is affected by its local luminance as well as the visual context in which it is viewed [1]. To probe this relationship, many visual stimuli (also known as visual brightness illusions) have been developed. Typically, brightness perception is tested with a small selection of these stimuli in a highly controlled laboratory setting. Since collecting empirical data is resourceful, there are many open questions with respect to how certain variations of these visual stimuli (e.g. luminance profiles, size, spatial frequency, noise, presentation times, etc) affect human brightness perception and how robust these findings are among a larger group of participants. The aim of this project will be to come up with a research question in the realm of human brightness perception, and then implement and conduct a psychophysical experiment, and to analyze and interpret the resulting data with statistical methods. The alternative aim of this project would be to come up with a research question in the realm of human brightness perception, which we can answer theoretically with the help of computational models of human brightness perception.
Students will have to
- scan and read papers from the brightness perception literature
- write code to conduct and analyze a psychophysical experiment or a simulated experiment with the help of computational models of human brightness perception
Students will learn
- how to conduct psychophysical experiments
- how to implement and test mechanistic models of human brightness perception
Requirements
- Good programming skills in Python
- Good English proficiency
If you are interested, please contact Lynn Schmittwilken (L.Schmittwilken@tu-berlin.de)