Cover not available
Part of
Colour Studies: A broad spectrum
Edited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 181–199

Bornstein’s paradox (redux)

The psychologist Marc Bornstein suggested it was surprising that (a) non-linguistic infants demonstrated categorical perception of colour and (b) such categorical perception did not facilitate the learning of colour names (Bornstein 1985). This is “Bornstein’s paradox” and it has been articulated by a number of researchers since 1985. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is in fact no paradox. Susan Carey’s idea of “core cognition” is extended to colour categorization and it is argued that, if colour is a domain of core cognition, the development from initial infant colour experience need not be continuous with linguistic experience (Carey 2009). This argument makes reference to Carey’s work on object permanence, and number as analogous to colour naming.
Published online: 26 November 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.191.12ded
References (41)
Backscheider, A.G., and M. Shatz. 1993. “Children’s Acquisition of the Lexical Domain of Color.” In What We Think, What We Mean, and How We Say It, ed. by K. Beals, et al., 11–21. CLS 29 (Vol. 2). Chicago: The Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Baillargeon, R., E.S. Spelke, and S. Wasserman. 1985. “Object Permanence in Five-Month-Old Infants.” Cognition 20: 191–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bornstein, Marc. 1985. “On the Development of Color Naming in Young Children.” Brain and Language 26: 72–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, Marc, W. Kessen, and S. Weiskopf. 1976. “Color Vision and Hue Categorization in Young Human Infants.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 2: 115–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carey, Susan. 2009. The Origin of Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carey, Susan, and E. Bartlett. 1978. “Acquiring a Single New Word.” Proceedings of the Stanford Child Language Conference 15: 17–29.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Jules B. 2006. “Color Terms and Color Concepts.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94 (4): 334–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidoff, Jules, and Joël Fagot. 2010. “Cross–species Assessment of the Linguistic Origins of Color Categories.” Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews 5: 100–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidoff, Jules, Julie Goldstein, and Debi Roberson. 2009. “Nature versus Nature: The Simple Contrast.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 102: 246–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dedrick, Don. 1998. Naming the Rainbow: Colour Language, Colour Science, and Culture. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. “The Roots / Routes of Colour Term Reference.” In Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, ed. by Barbara Saunders and J. van Brakel, Lanham, Md: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Dehane, S. 1997. The Number Sense. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fagot, Joël, Julie Goldstein, Jules Davidoff, and Alan Pickering. 2006. “Cross-species Differences in Color Categorization.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13: 275–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feigenson, S.L., S. Dehaene, and E. Spelke. 2004. “Core Systems of Number.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (7): 307–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Anna. 2006. “Constraints on Children’s Color Term Acquisition.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94: 322–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Anna, and Ian R.L. Davies. 2006. “Converging Evidence for Pre–linguistic Colour Categorization.” In Progress in Colour Studies: II Psychological Aspects, ed. by C. P. Biggam and N.J. Pitchford, 101–120. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Rochel, and C.R. Gallistel. 1978. The Child’s Understanding of Number. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Aubrey L., Terry Regier, Paul Kay, and Richard B. Ivry. 2005. “Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in the Right Visual Field but not the Left.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 489–494. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Peter. 2010. “Worlds without Words: Commensurability and Causality in Language, Culture, and Cognition.” In Malt and Wolff, 199–218.Google Scholar
Griffiths, P.E. 2002. “What is Innateness?” The Monist 85 (1): 70–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, Paul, Terry Regier, Aubrey L. Gilbert, and Richard B. Ivry. 2009. “Lateralized Whorf: Language influences perceptual decision in the right visual field.” In Language, Evolution and the Brain, ed. by James W. Minett and William S-Y. Wang, 261–284. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malt, Barbara C., and Phillip Wolff. 2010. Words and the Mind: How Words Capture Human Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, George A., and Philip N. Johnson-Laird. 1976. Language and Perception. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hanlon, C., and Debi Roberson. 2006. “Learning in Context: Linguistic and Attentional Constraints on Children’s Color Term Learning.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94: 275–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perfors, A., J. Tenenbaum, and Terry Regier. 2011. “The Learnability of Abstract Syntactic Principles.” Cognition 118: 306–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pitchford, Nicola J., and Kathy Mullen. 2003. “The Development of Conceptual Colour Categories in Pre–school Children: Influence of Perception on Categorization. Visual Cognition 10: 51–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. Computation and Cognition. 1984. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon W., and R.W. Storm. 1988. “Tracking Multiple Independent Targets: Evidence for a Parallel Tracking Mechanism.” Spatial Vision 3: 179–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regier, Terry, Paul Kay, Aubrey L. Gilbert, and Richard B. Ivry. 2010. “Language and Thought: Which Side Are You On, Anyway?” In Malt and Wolff, 165–182.
Roberson, Debi, Jules Davidoff, Ian R.L. Davies, and Laura R. Shapiro. 2004. “The Development of Color Categories in Two Languages: a Longitudinal Study.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 133: 554–571. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberson, Debi, and J. Richard Hanley. 2010. “Relatively Speaking: An Account of the Relationship between Language and Thought in the Color Domain.” In Malt and Wolff, 183–198.
Rosch Heider, Eleanor. 1972. “Universals in Color Naming and Memory.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 93: 10–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandhofer, C., and L. Smith. 1999. “Learning Color Words Involves Learning a System of Mappings.” Developmental Psychology. 35: 668–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner, K., K. Dobkins, and D. Barner. 2013. “Slow Mapping: Color Word Learning as a Gradual Inductive Process.” Cognition 127: 307–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wynn, K. 1990. “Children’s Understanding of Counting.” Cognition. 36: 155–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1992. “Children’s Acquisition of the Number Words and the Counting System.” Cognitive Psychology 24: 220–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar