Color, Language, and Perceptual Categorization - Lab Report Example

Color, Language, and Perceptual Categorization How do culture and language effect the perceptual categorization of color? Recent research has shown that people who speak different languages perceive color differently. Through laboratory research on the effect of language and what each culture verbally describes as color and how they perceive color shows a marked difference. Through the process of perceptual learning, laboratory results suggest that language could change color perception. THE RESEARCH People tend to see bands or categories of color. However the rainbow is a continuum and its light varies according to wavelength. The color language that people use to identify different shades and hues of color varies according to their cultural interpretation. People tend to see color “in their own language.” It appears that different languages have different terms for the same color. We will commence to study what effect that culture, particularly language, has on a person’s perception of color. If a person speaks a different language from another, will the two see different colors? Additionally, would someone from South Africa and someone from England observe the same object yet identify it with a different color? Researchers who have studied human thought and behavior have long been interested in how language shapes the human thought process. Researchers have investigated these phenomena by observing how people who speak different languages perceive color. They wanted to discover any correlation between language and thought. A study by Berlin and Kay (1969) showed that language had an effect on how people described and observed basic color schemes. However, the effect that a person’s language has on their perception of color did not show impressive results. The study indicated that the perception of color in relation to one’s language was minimal and even tended to point to a universal pattern of color recognition. Berlin proposed that color terms evolve and that given enough time, all languages eventually end up with eleven universal, basic color terms. These observations lead to the universal color perception theory. Of late, researchers have focused on another aspect of color perception, categorical perception (CP). EXPERIMENTS IN CATEGORICAL PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE The languages of South Africa have provided researcherer with the opportunity to study categorical perception across cultures. It was discovered that the South African language uses one color term for a color region while the English language needs two terms to describe the same color region. Some languages use a single term for green and blue, orange and yellow, etc. There was no boundary between the two colors in terms of their perception. The question that arose out of these studies was, do the people that speak these different languages have different perceptual boundaries as well? In answer to this question, researchers showed participants one color and then a stimuli of different colors. The participants were to identify stimuli that were the same as the target. By manipulating the target and the distracters from the same or different categories, CP effects could be studied. Using this mechanism, it was discovered that in comparison to English speakers, African speakers were able to identify a particular hue in one word but the English speakers needed two words to describe the same hue. English speakers were faster when the distracters are green and the target was blue and vice versa for African speakers. However, when the distracters and the target were both blue and both green, English speakers were slower than African speakers. In a task in which participants were shown three colors and asked to “pick the odd one out,” English speakers picked a color different than the other two categories. African speakers did not show a bias because all three colors were in the same color category. Similar studies have recently compared the effects of language on color by comparing speakers of English and Berinmo. Berinmo is a language spoken in Papua, New Guinea and has just five basic terms for color. (Roberson, Davies, and Davidoff, 2000). The result of this research was that people who spoke Berinmo discriminated two colors if the colors were separate from each other. The English speakers did not do the same because people who spoke Berinmo were able to discriminate these boundaries because they did not exist for them. Conversely, people who spoke Berinmo could not discriminate the two because they have no blue-green boundary. The people who spoke English showed better perception for colors in different English color categories than in the same color category. These results could indicate that the effects of language on CP are learned. Recent research has shown that through verbal labeling, language can have a direct effect on CP (Roberson and Davidoff, 2000). Roberson and Davidoff proposed that in a discrimination task that involves memory, people label colors with one category label and then remember them. People then compare the labels to discriminate between colors. The drawback is that it is limited by the way people remember colors and not how they perceive them. It could be possible for people who speak different languages to see different colors. This would only be possible if color perception could be changed. Perceptual learning shows that perception can be modified. In discriminating different line orientations and detecting tiny gaps between the lines along with contrasting patterns, people tend to get better the more they practice. Practice appears to make perfect. Category learning is a form of perceptual learning. A recent test was conducted to determine whether perceptual learning, specifically category learning, could modify color perception. (Ozgen and Davies, 2002). An experiment was structured so that the participants had to discriminate pairs of colors in the same region (blue or green). Separated by 500 ms, two colors in a pair were displayed one after another. After a period of days, the participants were able to steadily improve their color discrimination. In this experiment, participants were trained to categorize colors across new color boundaries and separate two types of hue referred to by the same English term. The participants’ discrimination skills were then tested along with their ability to discriminate between colors on different sides of a learned category. It was concluded that through training, CP effects were achieved. Another experiment was performed testing color discrimination. The participants were shown colors separately with a 5-s interval in between. This task involved memory and perception. When people use memory, they use verbal labels which lead to CP. The results of this experiment suggest that improved color discrimination could have been due to simple learning tricks rather than real learned behavior. In still another experiment, participants were tested in a discrimination exercise that required no memory because the two colors were shown at the same time. Color discrimination improved only across the new color category boundary. Currently an investigation is being held to determine if color category learning can result in detection of color differences. Results have shown that this occurs mainly for hues within the learned boundary. This is a good indication that learning hue categories can change color perception. People pay more attention to color boundary regions when they learn a new color category and improvement only occurs in those color regions. As a result of these studies and experiments one could conclude that there is a “possibility” that language effects color perception. CONCLUSION Observed findings on the differences in the way color can be modified by learning do not provide enough evidence to indicate that the process of learning a language may influence the way people perceive colors. The difference could be attributed to learned behavior (memory tricks) rather than actual perception. Further study is suggested, particularly in low-level color perception by people who speak different languages. REFERENCES Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ozgen, E., & Davies, I.R.L. (1998). Turkish color terms: Tests of Berlin and Kay’s theory of color universals and linguistic relativity. Linguistics, 36, 919–956. Ozgen, E., & Davies, I.R.L. (2002). Acquisition of categorical color perception: A perceptual learning approach to the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 477–493. Roberson, D., & Davidoff, J. (2000). The categorical perception of colours and facial expressions: The effect of verbal interference. Memory & Cognition, 28, 977–986. Roberson, D., Davies, I., & Davidoff, J. (2000). Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence in favor of linguistic relativity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 369–398. Whorf, B.L. (1956). Language, thought and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Original work published 1940). Read More