Failure of concordance of the Farnsworth D15 test and the Nagel anomaloscope matching range in anomalous trichromatism

Abstract

The Farnsworth D15 test (D15) was developed for use in occupational guidance. People with significant color deficiency, including all dichromats are expected to fail and people with slight color deficiency are expected to pass. Pass is a circular results diagram and fail an interlacing pattern with one or more red-green isochromatic errors (Farnsworth, 1947). The Nagel anomaloscope is a “gold standard” reference test for identifying and classifying red-green color deficiency. The matching range on the red/green mixture scale indicates the severity of the discrimination deficit. Pass/fail results for the D15 are presented for 107 protanomalous and 410 deuteranomalous trichromats and compared with the anomaloscope matching range. Thirty-six percent of the subjects examined failed the D15. Protanomalous trichromats are able to utilize perceived luminance contrast to obtain good results on the D15 but 42% of these subjects failed the D15 compared with 35% of deuteranomalous subjects. Failure of the D15 was clearly related to the Nagel matching range in deuteranomalous trichromatism but not in protanomalous trichromatism. For example, 84% of deuteranomalous subjects with matching ranges > 30 scale units failed the D15 but only 2% with matching ranges < 9 scale units were unsuccessful. In comparison, 53% of protanomalous subjects with matching ranges > 15 scale units and 33% of subjects with matching ranges < 5 scale units were unsuccessful. Protanomalous trichromats with apparently minimal color deficiency are therefore shown to have poor practical hue discrimination ability as measured with this test.