An Associative Interpretation of the Indirect McCollough Effect

Following an induction procedure in which a coloured grid is alternated with a square of a complementary colour, subjects report colour after-effects on both the grid orientation present during induction and the orthogonal non-induced grid orientation. The after-effect reported on the induced grid orientation is called the McCollough effect (ME). The after-effect reported on the non-induced grid orientation is called the indirect ME. There is evidence that the ME represents an instance of Pavlovian conditioning. The present results support a conditioning interpretation of the indirect ME and are inconsistent with interpretations of the indirect ME that attribute the phenomenon to special orthogonal coding mechanisms within the visual system.