Language is not necessary for color categories

Abstract

The origin of color categories is under debate. Some researchers argue that color categories are linguistically constructed, while others claim they have a pre-linguistic, and possibly even innate, basis. Although there is some evidence that 4-6-month-old infants respond categorically to color, these empirical results have been challenged in recent years. First, it has been claimed that previous demonstrations of color categories in infants may reflect color preferences instead. Second, and more seriously, other labs have reported failing to replicate the basic findings at all. In the current study we used eye-tracking to test 8-month-old infants' categorical perception of a previously attested color boundary (green-blue) and an additional color boundary (bluepurple). Our results show that infants are faster and more accurate at fixating targets when they come from a different color category than when from the same category (even though the chromatic separation sizes were equated). This is the case for both blue-green and blue-purple. Our findings provide independent evidence for the existence of color categories in pre-linguistic infants, and suggest that categorical perception of color can occur without color language. Research Highlights• Speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses are more similar among siblings than unrelated ageand sex-matched children.• Unrelated children matched on reading ability also have more similar responses than unrelated children matched only on age and sex.

Misconceptions About Colour Categories

“…Other studies claimed the inverse, namely that linguistic categories result from the categorical nature of colour perception. They found that colour vision itself is inherently categorical (Regier, Kay, & Khetarpal, 2007), and that colour categories already exist in infancy before language acquisition (Bornstein, Kessen, & Weiskopf, 1976;Franklin, Clifford, Williamson, & Davies, 2005;Franklin & Davies, 2004;Franklin, Drivonikou, Bevis, et al, 2008;Franklin, Drivonikou, Clifford, et al, 2008;Franklin, Pilling, & Davies, 2005;Ozturk, Shayan, Liszkowski, & Majid, 2013;Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, Bosten, & Franklin, 2017). Still other findings did not find categorical patterns in colour perception and contradicted the idea of categorical perception (Bachy et al, 2012; A. M. Brown, Lindsey, & Guckes, 2011;Cropper, Kvansakul, & Little, 2013;Davidoff, Goldstein, Tharp, Wakui, & Fagot, 2012;Gerhardstein, Renner, & Rovee-Collier, 1999;Grandison et al, 2016;Kay & Kempton, 1984; Misconceptions about colour categories 8 al., 2010; Roberson, Hanley, & Pak, 2009;Webster & Kay, 2012;Witzel & Gegenfurtner, 2011.…”

The Myth of Unique Hues

“…Clifford et al 2009;Franklin and Davies 2006;Ozturk et al 2013, for infants, and Clifford et al 2011, 2012; Ö zgen and Davies 2002, but also Witzel and Gegenfurtner 2013, for adults). The phenomenon can be more precisely characterized as enhanced discrimination of perceptually equidistant stimulus pairs in some regions of the perceptual color space compared to other regions.…”

The combined effect of front-of-pack nutrition labels and health claims on consumers’ evaluation of food products

“…The mere addition of colour to an otherwise monochrome DIG leads to increased understanding (Antúnez et al, 2015). This is likely to be because colours, unlike numbers, are processed innately (Ozturk, Shayan, Liszkowski, & Majid, 2013) and unconsciously (Ro, Singhal, Breitmeyer, & Garcia, 2009). Similarly, symbols have been found to help people differentiate healthy and unhealthy foods (Feunekes, Gortemaker, Willems, Lion, & van den Kommer, 2008;Maubach et al, 2014).…”