Biological origins of color categorization

Abstract

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

Acquisition of the Meaning of the Word Orange Requires Understanding of the Meanings of Red, Pink, and Purple: Constructing a Lexicon as a Connected System

“…On one hand, it has been established that children perceive the color spectrum categorically, well before they start to show signs of understanding color words (Bornstein, 1985b;Franklin & Davies, 2004;Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, Bosten, & Franklin, 2017;Yang, Kanazawa, Yamaguchi, & Kuriki, 2016). The color lexicon is theoretically interesting in many respects, but particularly so when considering the relation between pre-linguistic perception and language.…”

“…The color lexicon is theoretically interesting in many respects, but particularly so when considering the relation between pre-linguistic perception and language. On one hand, it has been established that children perceive the color spectrum categorically, well before they start to show signs of understanding color words (Bornstein, 1985b;Franklin & Davies, 2004;Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, Bosten, & Franklin, 2017;Yang, Kanazawa, Yamaguchi, & Kuriki, 2016). The fact that infants perceive the color spectrum as distinctive color categories may be taken to mean that they only need to learn the word form for each of the pre-segmented categories (e.g., Yang et al, 2016).…”

The biological basis of the experience and categorization of colour

“…And, while acknowledging that linguistic criteria may be of importance in classifying colours in terms of language, we believe that the classification according to colour categories is not dependent upon language and experience. Supporting evidence for this comes from the ability of children and monkeys to categorize colours much like adult humans (Sandell, Gross, & Bornstein, ; Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, Bosten, & Franklin, ).…”

A Novel Method to Investigate How Dimensions Interact to Inform Perceptual Salience in Infancy

“…The ability to discriminate colors progressively improves through development until adolescence (Knoblauch, Vital‐Durand, & Barbur, ). Previous studies have shown that infants look longer at some colors than others (e.g., Franklin, Bevis, Ling, & Hurlbert, ; Franklin et al., ; Zemach, Chang, & Teller, ) and can categorize the spectrum of color (e.g., Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, & Franklin, ). However, we know little about how the dimensions of color contribute and interact in infants’ perception of color.…”