Propagation of colour information across borders

When a part of an image is stabilized on the retina, the part fades to the same colour as its unstabilized surround. The apparent colour of an empty field is therefore assumed to be equal to the colour of its borders. Here, we will show that a similar phenomenon can take place even when the border of a centre field is still visible. A grey square patch with a black frame was surrounded by a coloured background. When the frame had such crossed disparity that the frame appeared in front of the patch, the colour of the patch became perceptually similar to that of the background, indicating that the colour of an empty field is not determined by the colour of its borders alone.