A functional theory of the McCollough effect.

Pattern-contingent color aftereffects, or McCollough effects (MEs), are used to probe the visual brain's operations psychophysically. Their neural substrate is unknown, however, and theories about them are weak. Our theory proposes a strong functional role for MEs and a neuropsychological basis that accounts for "top-down" (global) constraints ignored by other theories. The functional aspect of the theory is based on the concept of contingent adaptation level, following Helson (1964), and on the "error-correcting device" of Andrews (1964), which tracks and adjusts internal representation to external-world contingencies. The neuropsychological part of the theory postulates that global properties are the result of MEs being generated not at the individual detector level but in vectorfields of which the detectors are elements. It is an implementation of Lie transformation group theory (Hoffman, 1966). Evidence for this model is assessed.