It's not really red, green, yellow, blue: an inquiry into perceptual color space

Jameson, Kimberly A.; D’Andrade, Roy G.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511519819.014

Cited by 153 publications

(147 citation statements)

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“…However, subsequent investigation of the retinogeniculate cone-opponent pathways of the visual system that underpin the early encoding of color has revealed that these pathways do not encode the "basic" white, black, red, green, blue, and yellow categories (and the perceptually pure "unique" hues of these categories) as originally proposed (32). What are commonly known as the "red-green" and "blue-yellow" cardinal cone-opponent mechanisms are actually better described as "cherry-teal" and "chartreuse-violet" in terms of the appearance of the colors they encode.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 98%

Biological origins of color categorization

Skelton

Catchpole

Abbott

et al. 2017

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

107

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The biological basis of the commonality in color lexicons across languages has been hotly debated for decades. Prior evidence that infants categorize color could provide support for the hypothesis that color categorization systems are not purely constructed by communication and culture. Here, we investigate the relationship between infants' categorization of color and the commonality across color lexicons, and the potential biological origin of infant color categories. We systematically mapped infants' categorical recognition memory for hue onto a stimulus array used previously to document the color lexicons of 110 nonindustrialized languages. Following familiarization to a given hue, infants' response to a novel hue indicated that their recognition memory parses the hue continuum into red, yellow, green, blue, and purple categories. Infants' categorical distinctions aligned with common distinctions in color lexicons and are organized around hues that are commonly central to lexical categories across languages. The boundaries between infants' categorical distinctions also aligned, relative to the adaptation point, with the cardinal axes that describe the early stages of color representation in retinogeniculate pathways, indicating that infant color categorization may be partly organized by biological mechanisms of color vision. The findings suggest that color categorization in language and thought is partially biologically constrained and have implications for broader debate on how biology, culture, and communication interact in human cognition.color lexicons | infant | categorization | color perception | vision

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 98%

Biological origins of color categorization

Skelton

Catchpole

Abbott

et al. 2017

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

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Following the tradition established by Hering, and later by Jameson and Hurvich [2], when color opponent cells were discovered in the primate lateral geniculate nucleus, they were described as being selective for red and green, and blue and yellow [3]. Though it is now clear that the chromatic tuning of color-opponent mechanisms revealed psychophysically does not map on to the Hering primaries [4], and that the color-sensitive cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus encode intermediate color directions [5][6], the conviction that unique hues must have prominence in neural color signals has led to persistence of the idea that coloropponent cells encode the Hering primaries, and to a search for higher-order color mechanisms that are selective for red, green, blue and yellow [7][8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical evidence for unique hues?

Bosten

Boehm

2014

J. Opt. Soc. Am. A

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Received Month X, XXXX; revised Month X, XXXX; accepted Month X, XXXX; posted Month X, XXXX (Doc. ID XXXXX); published Month X, XXXX Red, green, blue, yellow, and white have been distinguished from other hues as unique. We present results from two experiments that undermine existing behavioral evidence to separate the unique hues from other colors. In Experiment 1 we used hue scaling, which has often been used to support the existence of unique hues, but has never been attempted with a set of non-unique primaries. Subjects were assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In the "unique" condition, they rated the proportions of red, yellow, blue and green that they perceived in each of a series of test stimuli. In the "intermediate" condition, they rated the proportions of teal, purple, orange and lime. We find, surprisingly, that results from the two conditions are largely equivalent. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of instruction on subjects' settings of unique hues. We find that altering the color terms given in the instructions to include intermediate hues leads to significant shifts in the hue that subjects identify as unique. The results of both experiments question subjects' ability to identify certain hues as unique.

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“…More sophisticated physiological models will probably not alter that fact. Indeed, the results hint why it has not been possible to explain basic colour categories based on physiological constraints alone (e.g., Gellatly 1995;Jameson & D'Andrade 1997;Saunders & van Brakel 1997). If different populations exposed to different environmental stimuli and ecological challenges were to be compared, the repertoires of the agents in the population would be even more different.…”

Section: Individualistic Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…20), providing natural anchors for color categories. See also the Interpoint Distance Model ( Jameson & D'Andrade 1997). If such ultimately physiological sources of structure can be operationalized for testing with S&B's methodology, combined with a realistic color environment and coupling among agents, it may be that they lead to convergence.…”

Section: David Bimlermentioning

confidence: 99%