Misconceptions About Colour Categories

Abstract

The origin of colour categories and their relationship to colour perception have been the prime example for testing the influence of language on perception and thought (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) and more generally for investigating the biological, ecological and cultural determination of human cognition (nature-nurture debate). These themes are central to a broad range of disciplines, including vision research, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, developmental science, cultural anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. Unfortunately, though, it has been tacitly taken for granted that the conceptual assumptions and methodological practices from the dawn of empirical research on colour categorisation are the gold standard for current colour category research. Here, we show that these assumptions and practices are obsolete and flawed and have led to four fundamental and widespread misconceptions about colour categorisation: 1.) that colour perception is inherently categorical; 2.) that English Basic Colour Terms correspond to universal categories that are the end point of a fixed evolutionary sequence; 3.) that the prototypes of English Basic Colour Terms are perceptually salient and qualify as focal colours; and 4.) that colour category research essentially revolves around the universalism-realism debate. State-of-theart research on colour categorisation provides new, more sophisticated approaches and allows for rectifying those four statements. At the same time, some of the questions underlying those statements are not convincingly answered yet and constitute major challenges to future research. The critical considerations on colour categorisation may be transferred to research on other kinds of perceptual categorisation to inspire new, more general research questions.

Color naming and categorization depend on distinct functional brain networks

“…Even within one culture, people vary in their choice of labels, when they describe colored items (e.g. Lindsey and Brown, 2014;Brown, Isse and Lindsey, 2016;Kuriki et al, 2017), or when they sort colors into categories (reviewed in: Witzel, 2018). Response times in categorization tasks are modulated by categorical membership of colors: people are faster in categorizing and naming colors with clear category membership than colors that are more ambiguous (Bornstein and Monroe, 1980;Zimmer, 1982).…”

Red, yellow, green, and blue are not particularly colorful

“…Colorfulness might provide the missing link between color perception, color appearance, and color naming, a central topic in color science and in research on the relationship between perception and language (for review, see Siuda-Krzywicka, Boros, Bartolomeo, & Witzel, 2019;Witzel, 2018a;Witzel & Gegenfurtner, 2018b). Colorfulness is the attribute of a perceived color according to which the color appears to be more or less chromatic.…”

“…To explain the particular role of English prototypes it has been suggested that the prototypes of the English color categories are particularly ''salient'' and ''linguistically codable'' (Bolton, 1978;Boynton & Olson, 1990;Brown & Lenneberg, 1954;Hays, Margolis, Naroll, & Perkins, 1972;Rosch Heider, 1972;Sturges & Whitfield, 1997;Witkowski & Brown, 1982). Under the assumption that English category prototypes have a particular property due to which they correspond to the ''focus'' of universal color categories independent of language they were termed focal colors (Berlin & Kay, 1969;Rosch Heider, 1972; for review, see Witzel, 2018aWitzel, , 2018b. Regier, Kay, and Khetarpal (2007) showed that the different categories of a wide range of languages were distributed so that the color chips within the respective categories tended to be more similar than those across categories.…”

Examining Implicit Discretization in Spectral Schemes

“…One side argues that a perceptual phenomenon gives rise to the formation of consistent categories across languages; the other argues that prior knowledge of language biases individuals' perception. The literature has yet to reach a consensus regarding what drives categorical perception [RK09,Wit18].…”