How to Improve Your Color Discrimination — What Practice Can and Can't Change
How far can practice improve color discrimination? A look at research on perceptual learning and color categories, how to make the most of Practice mode, and how to compare your results properly.
Color discrimination is a mix of what you are born with and what you can develop. Some things, like the types and sensitivity of your cone cells, do not change, but what you look at and how you compare does improve with practice.
What practice can change
In psychology, the improvement of sensory discrimination through repeated training is called perceptual learning, and color is no exception. Özgen and Davies (2002) showed that when adults were taught a new color category boundary, their color discrimination improved near that boundary.
Language has an effect too. Russian uses separate basic color terms for light blue and dark blue, and Winawer et al. (2007) found that Russian speakers discriminated blue pairs straddling that boundary faster. This suggests that the habit of naming distinctions can influence how quickly you tell colors apart.
Hands-on experience works in a similar way. Press operators and color matching technicians can quickly say which way a color has drifted (redder, duller), but this is less about their eyes getting better and more about their comparison strategies getting more refined.
What practice cannot change
Inherited color vision deficiencies, where a cone type is missing or its sensitivity curve is shifted, cannot be fixed by practice. Special glasses can boost contrast between some colors, but they do not turn color vision into normal color vision. Age-related changes to the lens are not something practice can address either.
Getting the most out of Practice mode
- Practice only your weak hue family: Take the weak family from your results screen, select it in Practice mode's hue family option and repeat.
- Practice near your limit: In Practice mode you go up a level when you are right and down one when you miss. You naturally keep getting rounds near your limit, which is the most efficient zone to train in.
- Scanning strategy: Take in the whole grid at a glance to find the square that pops out; if you are unsure, compare squares row by row with their neighbors. Staring at one square for a long time makes your eyes adapt to that color and actually blurs the difference.
- Put it into words: Silently describe whether the odd square is lighter, duller or leaning toward some other color than the base. It trains you to name differences.
- Short and often: Discrimination drops when your eyes are tired. Keep sessions under 10 minutes and rest by looking at something far away.
Comparing your results properly
- Only compare results taken on the same device, at the same brightness and under similar lighting.
- Look at the trend across several runs rather than a single result. Challenge mode involves some luck.
- Hue family comparisons become reliable once you have answered enough rounds in total (10 or more per family).
A word of caution
If red–green or blue–yellow discrimination stays much harder even after practice, get a standard color vision test from an eye doctor. This test is not a medical diagnosis.
References
- Özgen, E., Davies, I. R. L. (2002). Acquisition of categorical color perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 131(4), 477–493
- Winawer, J. et al. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. PNAS 104(19), 7780–7785