Categorical encoding of color in the brain

Bird, Chris M.; Berens, Sam C.; Horner, Aidan J.; Franklin, Anna

doi:10.1073/pnas.1315275111

Cited by 83 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Color processing depends upon an extensive network of brain regions that process retinal signals (40), culminating in the highest levels of processing, in frontal cortex (41). The present report leverages color language as perhaps the best readout of this machinery as it pertains to behavior to uncover the forces behind the most fundamental color categorization, warm versus cool.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Color naming across languages reflects color use

Gibson

Futrell

Jara‐Ettinger

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

238

245

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What determines how languages categorize colors? We analyzed results of the World Color Survey (WCS) of 110 languages to show that despite gross differences across languages, communication of chromatic chips is always better for warm colors (yellows/reds) than cool colors (blues/greens). We present an analysis of color statistics in a large databank of natural images curated by human observers for salient objects and show that objects tend to have warm rather than cool colors. These results suggest that the cross-linguistic similarity in color-naming efficiency reflects colors of universal usefulness and provide an account of a principle (color use) that governs how color categories come about. We show that potential methodological issues with the WCS do not corrupt information-theoretic analyses, by collecting original data using two extreme versions of the colornaming task, in three groups: the Tsimane', a remote Amazonian hunter-gatherer isolate; Bolivian-Spanish speakers; and English speakers. These data also enabled us to test another prediction of the color-usefulness hypothesis: that differences in color categorization between languages are caused by differences in overall usefulness of color to a culture. In support, we found that color naming among Tsimane' had relatively low communicative efficiency, and the Tsimane' were less likely to use color terms when describing familiar objects. Color-naming among Tsimane' was boosted when naming artificially colored objects compared with natural objects, suggesting that industrialization promotes color usefulness.color categorization | information theory | color cognition | Whorfian hypothesis | basic color terms

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Color naming across languages reflects color use

Gibson

Futrell

Jara‐Ettinger

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

238

245

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Previous functional neuroimaging studies have associated area V4, located in the fusiform gyrus, as an important site for color perception in the adult human brain (33)(34)(35). A recent fMRI study reported that the categorical clustering of neural representation for color-naming was found in the ventral visual areas V4v and VO1 (20), whereas these areas seem to change their responses flexibly under different tasks (19), probably according to the top-down signal from higher order areas that define categories (31). An electrophysiological study in macaque monkeys' inferior temporal cortex (18) showed the presence of neurons with selectivity for color categories, which was highly similar to the categories measured by psychophysics in humans (32).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cortical response to categorical color perception in infants investigated by near-infrared spectroscopy

Yang

Kanazawa

Yamaguchi

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Perceptual color space is continuous; however, we tend to divide it into only a small number of categories. It is unclear whether categorical color perception is obtained solely through the development of the visual system or whether it is affected by language acquisition. To address this issue, we recruited prelinguistic infants (5-to 7-mo-olds) to measure changes in brain activity in relation to categorical color differences by using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We presented two sets of geometric figures to infants: One set altered in color between green and blue, and the other set altered between two different shades of green. We found a significant increase in hemodynamic responses during the between-category alternations, but not during the within-category alternations. These differences in hemodynamic response based on categorical relationship were observed only in the bilateral occipitotemporal regions, and not in the occipital region. We confirmed that categorical color differences yield behavioral differences in infants. We also observed comparable hemodynamic responses to categorical color differences in adults. The present study provided the first evidence, to our knowledge, that colors of different categories are represented differently in the visual cortex of prelinguistic infants, which implies that color categories may develop independently before language acquisition.H umans can discriminate thousands of colors among continuous color space. However, we use only a handful of color terms to describe colors in our daily communication. From the analyses of data for the World Color Survey (www1.ICSI.Berkeley. EDU/wcs/), a corpus of color-naming data from 110 universal languages, many studies have revealed that particular structures of color terms used by speakers exist, and that these structures possess some common features (1, 2). Furthermore, these common features had been found even in the color perception of infants before the acquisition of the color terms (3-5). These results imply that categorical color perception may have some biological basis across cultures and languages. On the other hand, one argument for categorical color perception is that the color lexicon changes perceptual differences among colors so that colors from the same linguistic category appear much closer than colors of different categories (6, 7). A possible hypothesis is that categorical color perception has an innate perceptual foundation, and then could be modified along with the acquisition of language (8).A recent set of studies focusing on hemispheric asymmetries in categorical color perception has added another perspective to this hypothesis. Gilbert et al. (9) found that the reaction time for detecting a colored target among differently colored distractors was faster when the target and distractors belonged to different categories than when they belonged to the same category. They named this phenomenon the color-category effect, and reported that this category effect is evident only when the target was in the ...

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“…Evidence that is consistent with nonverbal categorization taking place within perception includes neural evidence of early categorical encoding in the brain (Stoughton & Conway, 2008;Bird et al, 2014), categorical color constancy in perception of real-world scenes (Olkkonen et al, 2010), and categorical effects on visual search for colored targets (Daoutis et al, 2006). The reported results contribute to this body of evidence by demonstrating that categorization influences matching performance even with an in-view stimulus.…”

Section: Color Terms and Categories; Verbal Versus Visual Memorymentioning

confidence: 96%

Why some colors appear more memorable than others: A model combining categories and particulars in color working memory.

Bae¹,

Olkkonen²,

Allred³

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

266

361

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Categorization with basic color terms is an intuitive and universal aspect of color perception. Yet research on visual working memory capacity has largely assumed that only continuous estimates within color space are relevant to memory. As a result, the influence of color categories on working memory remains unknown. We propose a dual content model of color representation in which color matches to objects that are either present (perception) or absent (memory) integrate category representations along with estimates of specific values on a continuous scale ("particulars"). We develop and test the model through 4 experiments. In a first experiment pair, participants reproduce a color target, both with and without a delay, using a recently influential estimation paradigm. In a second experiment pair, we use standard methods in color perception to identify boundary and focal colors in the stimulus set. The main results are that responses drawn from working memory are significantly biased away from category boundaries and toward category centers. Importantly, the same pattern of results is present without a memory delay. The proposed dual content model parsimoniously explains these results, and it should replace prevailing single content models in studies of visual working memory. More broadly, the model and the results demonstrate how the main consequence of visual working memory maintenance is the amplification of category related biases and stimulus-specific variability that originate in perception.

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Categorical encoding of color in the brain

Cited by 83 publications

References 45 publications

Color naming across languages reflects color use

Color naming across languages reflects color use

Cortical response to categorical color perception in infants investigated by near-infrared spectroscopy

Why some colors appear more memorable than others: A model combining categories and particulars in color working memory.

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