The Ebbinghaus (Titchener) illusion was examined in a remote culture (Himba) with no words for geometric shapes. The illusion was experienced less strongly by Himba compared with English participants, leading to more accurate size contrast judgments in the Himba. The study included two conditions of inducing stimuli. The illusion was weaker when the inducing stimuli were dissimilar (diamonds) to the target (circle) compared with when they were similar (circles). However, the illusion was weakened to the same extent in both cultures. It is argued that the more accurate size judgments of the Himba derive from their tendency to prioritize the analysis of local details in visual processing of multiple objects, and not from their impoverished naming.

a b s t r a c tTwo experiments attempted to reconcile discrepant recent findings relating to children's color naming and categorization. In a replication of Franklin and colleagues (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90 (2005) 114-141), Experiment 1 tested English toddlers' naming and memory for blue-green and blue-purple colors. It also found advantages for between-category presentations that could be interpreted as support for universal color categories. However, a different definition of knowing color terms led to quite different conclusions in line with the Whorfian view of Roberson and colleagues (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133 (2004) 554-571). Categorical perception in recognition memory was now found only for children with a fuller understanding of the relevant terms. It was concluded that color naming can both underestimate and overestimate toddlers' knowledge of color terms. Experiment 2 replicated the between-category recognition superiority found in Himba children by Franklin and colleagues for the blue-purple range. But Himba children, whose language does not have separate terms for green and blue, did not show a cross-category advantage for that set; rather, they behaved like English children who did not know their color terms.

Perceptual similarity was examined in a remote culture (Himba) and compared to that of Western observers. Similarity was assessed in a relative size judgement task and in an odd-one-out detection task. Th us, we examined the eff ects of culture on what might be considered low-level visual abilities. For both tasks, we found that performance was aff ected by stimuli that were culturally relevant to the tasks. In Experiment 1, we showed that the use of cow stimuli instead of the standard circles increased illusory strength for the Himba. In Experiment 2, only the Himba showed more accurate detection based on category diff erences in the displays. It is argued that that Categorical Perception in Experiment 2, based on its presumed Whorfi an origins, was the more reliable procedure for examining the eff ects of culture on perception.Similarity is an inherently unspecifi ed notion with an infi nity of ways that two objects may be decided to be similar (Goodman, 1972). Hence, we should not be surprised that diff erent experiences, whether in the same or diff erent cultures, promote similarity in diff erent ways. Here we examine perceptual similarity in a remote culture and compare performance to the same stimuli by observers from our Western culture. We examine similarity in a size judgement task and in an odd-one-out detection task. Th us, we are examining what might be considered low-level visual abilities. Yet, we shall show that the experience of the remote tribe allows both of these tasks to be dealt with diff erently from Western observers. In so doing, we return to an old debate made important in the New Look movement in psychology (Bruner and Goodman, 1947) that basic perceptual processes can be infl uenced by our value systems. A

As part of the more general issue of whether culture can affect perception, the present paper addresses the Whorfian question of whether the language available to describe perceptual experience can influence the experience itself. It investigated the effect of vocabulary on perceptual classification by the study of a remote culture (Himba) which possesses a poor colour vocabulary but a rich vocabulary of animal pattern terms. Thus, the present study examined Categorical Perception (CP) with a type of visual stimulus not previously used to assess the effect of labels on perceptual judgments. For the animal patterns, the Whorfian view predicted that it would only be the Himba who showed superiority for cross‐category decisions as only they have the appropriate labels. The Whorfian view was upheld and confirmed previous findings that linked perceptual differences to labelling differences.

International audienceBerlin and Kay (1969) found systematic restrictions in the color terms of the world's languages and were inclined to look to the primate visual system for their origin. Because the visual system does not provide adequate neurophysiological discontinuities to supply natural color category boundaries, and because recent evidence points to a linguistic origin (Davidoff, Davies, & Roberson, 1999), a new approach was used to investigate the controversial issue of the origin of color categories. Baboons and humans were given the same task of matching-to-sample colors that crossed the blue/green boundary. The data and consequent modeling were remarkably clear-cut All human subjects matched our generalization probe stimuli as if to a sharp boundary close to the midpoint between their training items. Despite good color discrimination, none of the baboons showed any inclination to match to a single boundary but rather responded with two boundaries close to the training stimuli. The data give no support to the claim that color categories are explicitly instantiated in the primate color vision system

International audienceConsideration is given to the tasks that make judgements of colour similarity based on perceptual similarity rather than categorical similarity. Irrespective of whether colour categories are taken to be universal (Berlin & Kay, 1969) or language induced (Davidoff, Davies, & Roberson, 1999), it is widely assumed that colour boundaries, and hence categorical similarity, would be used when categorising colours. However, we argue that categorical similarity is more reliably used in implicit than in explicit categorisation. Thus, in Experiment 1, we found that category boundaries may be overridden in the explicit task of matching-to-sample: There was a similar strong tendency to ignore colour boundaries and to divide the range of coloured stimuli into two equal groups in both Westerners and in a remote population (Himba). In Experiment 2, we showed that a distinctive stimulus (focal colour) in the range affected the equal division in a matching-to-sample task. Experiment 3 tested the stability of a category boundary in an implicit task (visual search) that assessed categorical perception; only for this task was categorisation largely immune to range effects and largely based on categorical similarity. It is concluded that, even after colour categories are acquired, perceptual rather than categorical similarity is commonly used in judgements of colour similarity

a b s t r a c tWe respond to the commentary of Franklin, Wright, and Davies (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 239-245 [2009]) by returning to the simple contrast between nature and nurture. We find no evidence from the toddler data that makes us revise our ideas that color categories are learned and never innate.

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