Set-size effects in visual search may be due to 1 or more of 3 factors: sensory processes such as lateral masking between stimuli, attentional processes limiting the perception of individual stimuli, or attentional processes affecting the decision rules for combining information from multiple stimuli. These possibilities were evaluated in tasks such as searching for a longer line among shorter lines. To evaluate sensory contributions, display set-size effects were compared with cuing conditions that held sensory phenomena constant. Similar effects for the display and cue manipulations suggested that sensory processes contributed little under the conditions of this experiment. To evaluate the contribution of decision processes, the set-size effects were modeled with signal detection theory. In these models, a decision effect alone was sufficient to predict the set-size effects without any attentional limitation due to perception.

This article describes color naming by 51 American English-speaking informants. A free-naming task produced 122 monolexemic color terms, with which informants named the 330 Munsell samples from the World Color Survey. Cluster analysis consolidated those terms into a glossary of 20 named color categories: the 11 Basic Color Term (BCT) categories of Berlin and Kay (1969, p. 2) plus nine nonbasic chromatic categories. The glossed data revealed two color-naming motifs: the green-blue motif of the World Color Survey and a novel green-teal-blue motif, which featured peach, teal, lavender, and maroon as high-consensus terms. Women used more terms than men, and more women expressed the novel motif. Under a constrained-naming protocol, informants supplied BCTs for the color samples previously given nonbasic terms. Most of the glossed nonbasic terms from the free-naming task named low-consensus colors located at the BCT boundaries revealed by the constrained-naming task. This study provides evidence for continuing evolution of the color lexicon of American English, and provides insight into the processes governing this evolution.

Color difference thresholds for our simulated teeth are generally in line with and extend results obtained with studies using "real" dental materials. No differences between thresholds for acceptability versus perceptibility were found. Furthermore, subjects often reported color differences when none existed, and this behavior needs to be factored into any determination of quality control standards for the fabrication of dental prostheses.

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