Here, "confused by contrast" mainly means tonal contrast, not compositional contrast. A camera meter isn’t truly confused—it simply measures the light/tone in the area it sees and tries to turn that into a middle gray average. Problems happen when the scene contains very bright and very dark areas, or when the brightest area dominates the frame, such as backlighting. Then the meter may expose for the overall average instead of the subject you care about, leaving the foreground too dark or bright subjects too dull.

White subjects often get rendered too gray unless you add exposure; black subjects often get rendered too gray unless you reduce exposure. That’s why snowy scenes and black dogs are classic examples.

Strong colors can also influence metering indirectly, especially with some meters, but metering is fundamentally about brightness/luminance rather than "color contrast" in the artistic sense. The blue-sky reading trick is a practical workaround for scenes where the subject’s tone or the overall contrast would mislead an averaging meter.

In short: yes, high tonal contrast can lead to misleading meter readings, and strong subject colors may matter depending on the meter, but the core issue is tone and scene brightness distribution.