Why GRUE? An Interpoint-Distance Model Analysis of Composite Color Categories

Abstract

This article applies the interpoint-distance model (IDM) to explain composite color categories that continue to challenge existing models in the literature. Using universal cognitive principles and heuristics suggested in the IDM, analyses demonstrate that the composite category blue-green (or GRUE) seen in many languages is one of several natural coding configurations expected in the development of a color lexicon for communicating about color sensations within a given ethnolinguistic society. Using the IDM, these enigmatic composite color categories can be explained and integrated into an updated view of the psychological processing responsible for similarities in cross-cultural color processing. The IDM also allows for revision of existing theories and increases our understanding of the cognition that underlies individuals' color naming, categorization, and concept formation.

World Color Survey color naming reveals universal motifs and their within-language diversity

“…on this issue recently (10,11), there is currently no full consensus view on the details of such an explanation (10,(12)(13)(14)(15)(16).…”

Confidence Judgments on Color Category Best Exemplars

“…She described a cognitivist view that hypothesizes separate mental representations for color percepts and semantic information about color. According to Jameson (2005), individuals maintain a perceptual representation of color based on their own perceptual capacities; however, they also maintain a shared cultural semantic representation of category structures and lexicalization specific to their culture. These two representations dictate separate and sometimes different color spaces and similarity structures that are linked by an additional level of cognitive representation, a cognitive naming function, that specifies the relations among the items in the two distinct spaces.…”

Re-locating colors in the OSA space

“…Some researchers have argued that blends of these two different perspectives would be most appropriate for modeling color-naming phenomena (Dedrick, 1997;Jameson, 2005;Jameson & Alvarado, 2003;Paramei, 2005).…”