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Drugs and Personality

V. The Effects of Stimulant and Depressant Drugs on the Suppression of the Primary Visual Stimulus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

H. J. Eysenck  and
S. Aiba
H. J. Eysenck
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry (Maudsley Hospital), University of London
S. Aiba
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry (Maudsley Hospital), University of London
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Extract

In a previous paper in this series, a brief discussion has been given of the theoretical reasons for anticipating that depressant drugs would shorten the perceptual after-effects of visual stimuli, and stimulant drugs would lengthen these effects. The present paper is concerned with a related type of prediction, also concerned with certain visual after-effects. The phenomenon in question was first observed by Bidwell; it has not received much study, unfortunately, in spite of its great theoretical interest. The phenomenon is simply this. If a beam of red light (the primary stimulus, or Sp) is thrown into the eye of a person having normal colour vision, that person will report a red sensation, followed after the extinction of the light source by a series of after-images, usually in the complementary colour. The theory governing the appearance of the after-image is conventionally a photochemical one; the Sp produces certain effects in the retina which are opposite in direction for complementary colours and which are reversed when the Sp ceases to act on the retina. This reversal is perceived as the complementary after-image. Bidwell discovered that when the Sp is shown only for a relatively short period of time, say 20 milliseconds, and is immediately followed by a neutral stimulus, such as a beam of white light, then the S is not perceived at all, but only the complementary after-image. In other words, a red stimulus is perceived as green, a green stimulus as red. It is this perception of a non-existent stimulus which caused the phenomenon to be of such interest to psychologists.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 103 , Issue 432 , July 1957 , pp. 661 - 665
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1957 

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References

1 Bidwell, S., “On subjective colour phenomena attending sudden changes of illumination”, Proc. roy. Soc. Lond., 1896, 60, 368—377.Google Scholar
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