Adult brightness vs. luminance as models of infant photometry: variability, biasability, and spectral characteristics for the two age groups favor the luminance model.

When infants fail to make chromatic discriminations, do the characteristics of their performance minima coincide more closely with the properties of adult luminance matches or heterochromatic brightness matches? In addition to their spectral properties, adult luminance matches are typically characterized by relatively small individual differences, whereas brightness matches are believed to be both more variable and more biasable. Two complementary experiments were carried out on adults and 8-week-old infant subjects. Both groups were tested with small (1.5 degrees to 4 degrees ) red and blue test fields of varying luminances, embedded in a white surround. In adults, heterochromatic brightness matches were measured. Individual differences spanned about 0.5 log units, and brightness matches could be biased by as much as 0.8 log units by varying the range of test field luminances. In infants, the locations of performance minima were measured. Individual differences spanned less than 0.1 log units, the mean performance minima coincided with predictions based on V10(lambda), and the location of the performance minimum was nearly unaffected by the range of test field luminances used. Thus by all three criteria, these data suggest that infants' performance minima are mediated by luminance rather than by brightness signals. To date there remains no evidence that the infant visual system computes a brightness signal.