A different interpretation as to why high CRI may be preferred by our visual system is from the predictive coding perspective and how color constancy works in visual perception.
If we take color constancy processes to be our mind trying to predict what the surface reflectance of an object is given the available information, then the wider the spectra of the illumination source, the better the cues our visual system has access to for inferring the surface colors of objects. You could imagine an extreme where you have a single wavelength light source like a ... (read more)
A different interpretation as to why high CRI may be preferred by our visual system is from the predictive coding perspective and how color constancy works in visual perception.
If we take color constancy processes to be our mind trying to predict what the surface reflectance of an object is given the available information, then the wider the spectra of the illumination source, the better the cues our visual system has access to for inferring the surface colors of objects. You could imagine an extreme where you have a single wavelength light source like a ... (read more)