The Development of Color Categories In Two Languages: A Longitudinal Study (original) (raw)
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Visual Cognition, 2003
This study investigates the influence of perceptual colour categorization on the development of conceptual colour space in 43 preschool children as a function of language-age. Knowledge of the 11 basic colour terms identified by Berlin and Kay (1969) was assessed in comprehension and naming tasks. Children's ability to comprehend basic colour terms was assessed in a spoken word-to-colour matching task in which a target colour was presented with two distracters from either distant or adjacent perceptual colour categories. Children's ability to name basic colour sensations was measured in an explicit naming task. Results showed that children's comprehension of basic colour terms was influenced by the perceptual relationship between the target and distracter colours. Most importantly, at a language-age of 3 years and above, naming errors were more likely to be made to adjacent, rather than distant, perceptual colour categories. These results are consistent with the prediction that categorical colour perception influences the underlying structure of developing conceptual colour space during the period in which children acquire basic colour terms. Young children appear to have difficulty establishing conceptual representations of colour sensations. For example, they can learn colour words without knowing the colour to which they refer, they will use a single colour word to name many different colours, and they often apply colour terms in a haphazard and inconsistent manner (e.g.
2020
This research investigated how German-speaking children learn color words, both in terms of centroid mappings and boundary delineation, and how they construct the color lexicon as a connected system. The results were compared to those of Japanese children to draw insights on general mechanisms that underlie the acquisition of words in the color lexicon. For both languages, input frequency and category size contributed to the ease of learning. In contrast, in both language groups, naming (in)consistency in adults predicted the adult-like boundary delineation.
Color term knowledge does not affect categorical perception of color in toddlers
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2005
Categorical perception of color is shown when colors from the same category are discriminated less easily than equivalently spaced colors that cross a category boundary. The current experiments tested various models of categorical perception. Experiment 1 tested for categorical responding in 2-to 4-year-olds, the age range for the onset establishment of color term knowledge. Experiment 2 tested for categorical responding in Himba toddlers, whose language segments the color space differently from the way in which the English language does so. Experiment 3 manipulated the conditions of the task to explore whether the categorical responding in Experiments 1 and 2 was equivalent to categorical perception. Categorical perception was shown irrespective of naming and was not stronger in those children with more developed color term knowledge. Cross-cultural differences in the extent of categorical perception were not found. These findings support universalistic models of color categorization and suggest that color term knowledge does not modify categorical perception, at least during the early stages of childhood.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2005
When learning basic color vocabulary, young children show a selective delay in the acquisition of brown and gray relative to other basic color terms. In this study, we Wrst establish the robustness of this Wnding and then investigate the extent to which perception, language, and color preference may inXuence color conceptualization. Experimental tasks were designed to measure diVerent aspects of perceptual color processing (discrimination and saliency), color preference and objective counts of color term frequency in preschool-directed language (books and mothers' speech) were used to compare the acquisition of three groups of colors: primary colors, secondary colors (orange, pink, and purple) that appear at the same time as the primary colors, and secondary colors (brown and gray) that appear late. Although our results suggest that perception does not directly shape young children's color term acquisition, we found that children prefer brown and gray signiWcantly less than basic colors and that these color terms appear signiWcantly less often in child-directed speech, suggesting that color preference, linguistic input, and developing color cognition may be linked.
Is the acquisition of basic-colour terms in young children constrained?
Perception, 2002
We investigated whether the learning of colour terms in childhood is constrained by a developmental order of acquisition as predicted by Berlin and Kay [1969 Basic Color Terms (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press)]. Forty-three children, aged between 2 and 5 years and grouped according to language ability, were given two tasks testing colour conceptualisation. Colour comprehension was assessed in a spoken-word-to-colour-matching task in which a target colour was presented in conjunction with two distractor colours. Colour naming was measured in an explicit naming task in which colours were presented individually for oral naming. Results showed that children's knowledge of basic-colour terms varied across tasks and language age, providing little support for a systematic developmental order. In addition, we found only limited support for an advantage for the conceptualisation of primary (red, green, blue, yellow, black, white) compared to non-primary colour terms across t...