Part of
Colour Studies: A broad spectrumEdited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 169–180
Edited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 169–180
The case for infant colour categories
Over the last four decades, evidence has accumulated to suggest that infants parse the continuum of colour into discrete categories. For example, multiple studies suggest that infants’ recognition memory treats discriminably different colours from the same category as if they are equivalent (e.g. Bornstein, Kessen and Weiskopf, 1976; Franklin and Davies, 2004). Despite the converging evidence, the existence of infant colour categories remains controversial. Here, we examine the evidence for and against the case for infant colour categories and consider alternative non-categorical explanations for prior findings. We also discuss a series of challenging theoretical questions on how infant colour categories relate to those in language, and on how infants could categorize colour in the absence of language.
References
Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay
1969 Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Belpaeme, Tony, and Joris Bleys
2009 “The Impact of Statistical Distributions of Colours on Colour Category Acquisition.” Journal of Cognitive Science 10: 1–20.
Bornstein, Marc
1976 “Infant Recognition Memory for Hue.” Developmental Psychology 12: 185–191. 
Bornstein, Marc, William Kessen, and Sally Weiskopf
1976 “Color Vision and Hue Categorisation in Young Human Infants.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance 2: 115–129.
Bornstein, Marc, and N.O. Korda
1984 “Discrimination and Matching within and between Hues Measured by Reaction Times: Some Implications for Categorical Perception and Levels of Information Processing.” Psychological Research 46: 207–222.
Brown, Angela, M., Lindsey Delwin, and Kevin M. Guckes
2011 “Color Names, Color Categories and Color–cued Visual Search: Sometimes, Color Perception is not Categorical.” Journal of Vision 11: 1–21.
Catherwood, Dianne, Boris Crassini, and Kate Freiberg
1987 “The Nature of Infant Memory for Hue.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 5: 385–394.
1990 “The Course of Infant Memory for Hue.” Australian Journal of Psychology 42: 277–285.
Clifford, Alexandra, Anna Franklin, Ian R.L. Davies, and Amanda Holmes
2009 “Electrophysiological Markers of Color Categories in the Infant Brain.” Brain and Cognition 71: 165–172.
Clifford, Alexandra, Anna Franklin, Amanda Holmes, and Ian R.L. Davies
2011 “Investigating the Underlying Mechanisms of Categorical Perception of Colour Using the Event-Related Potential Technique.” In New Directions in Colour Studies, ed. by Carole P. Biggam, Carole A. Hough, Christian J. Kay, and David R. Simmons, 237–249. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Clifford, Alexandra, Anna Franklin, Amanda Holmes, Gilda V. Drivonikou, Emre Özgen, and Ian R.L. Davies
2012 “Neural Correlates of Acquired Color Category Effects.” Brain and Cognition 80: 126–143.
Davidoff, Jules
2001 “Language and Perceptual Categorisation.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5: 382–387.
Davidoff, Jules, and Joel Fagot
2010 “Cross–species Assessment of the Linguistic Origins of Color Categories.” Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews 5: 100–116.
Davidoff, Jules, Julie Goldstein, and Debi Roberson
2009 “Nature versus Nature: The Simple Contrast.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 102: 246–250.
Davies, Ian R.L., and Anna Franklin
2002 “Categorical Similarity may Affect Colour Pop-out in Infants After-all.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 20: 185–203.
Fagot, Joël, Julie Goldstein, Jules Davidoff, and Alan Pickering
2006 “Cross-species Differences in Color Categorization.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13: 275–280.
Franklin, Anna
2009 “Pre-linguistic Categorical Perception of Colour cannot be Explained by Colour Preference: Response to Roberson and Hanley.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13: 501–502.
Franklin, Anna, and Ian R.L. Davies
2004 “New Evidence for Infant Colour Categories.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 22: 349–377.
Franklin, Anna, Gilda V. Drivonikou, Laura Bevis, Ian R.L. Davies, Paul Kay, and Terry Regier
2008 “Categorical Perception of Color is Lateralized to the Right Hemisphere in Infants, but to the Left Hemisphere in Adults.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 3221–3225.
Franklin, Anna, Emily Gibbons, Katie Chittenden, James Alvarez, and Chloe Taylor
2012 “Infant Color Preference for Red is not Selectively Context Specific.” Emotion 12: 1155–1160.
Franklin, Anna, Michael Pilling, and Ian R.L. Davies
2005 “The Nature of Infant Colour Categorisation: Evidence from Eye-movements on a Target Detection Task.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 91: 227–248.
Gerhardstein, Peter, Peggy Renner, and Carolyn Rovee-Collier
1999 “The Roles of Perceptual and Categorical Similarity in C 1 Color Pop-out in Infants.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 7: 403–420.
Gilbert, Aubrey L., Terry Regier, Paul Kay, and Richard B. Ivry
2006 “Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in the Right Visual Field but not the Left.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 489–494.
Harnad, Stevan
1987 “Psychophysical and Cognitive Aspects of Categorical Perception: A Critical Overview.” In Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition, ed. by Stevan Harnad, 287–301. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hespos, Susan J., and Elizabeth S. Spelke
2004 “Precursors to Spatial Language.” Nature 430: 453–456.
Jameson, Kimberly A
2005 “Why GRUE? An Interpoint-distance Model Analysis of Composite Color Categories.” Cross-Cultural Research 39: 159–194.
Kay, Paul, Brent Berlin, Luisa Maffi, William R Merrifield, and Richard Cook
2009. The World Colour Survey. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Kay, Paul, and Terry Regier
2003 “Resolving the Question of Color Naming Universals.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100: 9085–9089.
Knoblauch, Kenneth, François Vital-Durand, and John L. Barbur
2001 “Variation of Chromatic Sensitivity across the Life Span.” Vision Research 41: 23–26.
Kowalski, Kurt, and Herbert Zimiles
2006 “The Relation between Children’s Conceptual Functioning with Color and Color Term Acquisition.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94: 301–321.
Martin-Malivel, Julie, Michael C. Mangini, Joël Fagot, and Irving Biederman
2006 “Do Humans and Baboons Use the Same Information when Categorizing Human and Baboon Faces?” Psychological Science 17: 599–607.
Ozturk, Ozge, Shakila Shayan, Ulf Liszkowski, and Asifa Majid
2013 “Language is not Necessary for Color Categories.” Developmental Science 16: 111–115.
Pascalis, Olivier, and Michelle de Haan
2003 “Recognition Memory and Novelty Preference: What Model?” In Progress in Infancy Research 3, ed. by H. Hayne, and J. Fagen, 95–120. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Philipona, David L., and Kevin O’Regan
2006 “Color Naming, Unique Hues and Hue Cancellation Predicted from Singularities in Reflection Properties.” Visual Neuroscience 23: 331–339.
Pitchford, Nicola J., and Kathy Mullen
2001 “Conceptualization of Perceptual Attributes: A Special Case for Color?” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 80: 289–314.
Quinn, Paul, Alissa Westerlund, and Charles A. Nelson
2006 “Neural Markers of Categorization in 6-month-old Infants.” Psychological Science 17: 59–66.
Rakison, David H., and Yevdokiya Yermolayeva
2010 “Infant Categorization.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 1: 894–905.
Regier, Terry, and Paul Kay
2009 “Language, Thought and Color: Whorf was Half Right.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13: 439–446.
Regier, Terry, Paul Kay, and Richard S. Cook
2005 “Focal Colors are Universal after all.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 8386–8391.
Regier, Terry, Paul Kay, and Naveen Khetarpal
2007 “Color Naming Reflects Optimal Partitions of Color Space.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 1436–1441.
Roberson, Debi, and Jules Davidoff
2000 “The Categorical Perception of Colors and Facial Expressions: The Effect of Verbal Interference.” Memory and Cognition 28: 977–986.
Roberson, Debi, and J. Richard Hanley
2009 “Only Half Right: Comment on Regier and Kay.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13: 500–501.
Ruiz, M.J., and J.M. Hupé
2011 “Stimulus Saliency, not Colour Category Boundary, Accounts for ‘Whorfian’ Effects in Colour Search Tasks.” Perception 40: 196.
Werker, Janet F., and Richard C. Tees
1984 “Cross-language Speech Perception: Evidence for Perceptual Reorganization during the First Year of Life.” Infant Behavior and Development 7: 49–63.
Werner, John S., and B.R. Wooten
1985 “Unsettled Issues in Infant Color Vision.” Behavior and Development 8: 99–107.
Witzel, Christoph, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2011 “Is there a Lateralized Category Effect for Color?” Journal of Vision 11: 1–25.
Wright, Anthony, and William Cumming
1971 “Color-naming Functions for the Pigeon.” Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 15: 7–17.
Xiao, Youping, Christopher Kavanau, Lauren Bertin, and Ehud Kaplan
2011 “The Biological Basis of a Universal Constraint on Color Naming: Cone Contrasts and the Two-way Categorization of Colors.” PLoS ONE 6: e24994.
Yendrikhovskij, Sergej N
2001 “Computing Color Categories from Statistics of Natural Images.” Journal of Imaging Science and Technology 45: 409–41.
Cited by
Cited by 15 other publications
Hill, Christopher S.
2022. Appearance and Reality II. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 58 ff. 
2022. Perceptual Phenomenology. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 114 ff.
2022. Perceptual Experience,
2022. Perceptual Awareness of Particulars. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 90 ff.
2022. Percepts and Concepts. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 189 ff.
2022. Perceptual Consciousness. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 169 ff.
2022. Representationalism. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 1 ff.
2022. The Epistemic Role of Perception. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 215 ff.
2022. Appearance and Reality I. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 31 ff.
2022. A Quasi-Perceptualist Account of Pain Experience. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. 148 ff.
[no author supplied]
2022. Preface. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. xi ff.
2022. Dedication. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. v ff.
2022. List of Figures. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. xv ff.
2022. Copyright Page. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. iv ff.
2022. Epigraph. In Perceptual Experience, ► pp. xvii ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.