Cover not available
Part of
Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language and beyond
Edited by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam and Galina V. Paramei
[Not in series 217] 2018
► pp. 41–58

Chapter 3
The role of saturation in colour naming and colour appearance

| Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany

Saturation is an integral part of colour perception. Yet, this aspect of colour vision has been widely neglected in research on colour naming and colour appearance. Fundamental questions about colour naming and colour appearance need to be reconsidered in the light of the important role of saturation. These questions concern the variation of measurements across studies, the relationship between category prototypes and unique hues, cross-cultural regularities in colour categorization, focal colours and the salience of category prototypes, and the role of unique hues in colour appearance.

Keywords: colour categorization, colour naming, colour vision, chroma, saturation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Measuring categories and unique hues
  • 3.Universality of colour categories
  • 4.Salience of “focal colours”
  • 5.The uniqueness of intermediate hues
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.03wit
References
Abramov, Israel, and James Gordon
1994 “Color Appearance: On Seeing Red – or Yellow, or Green, or Blue.” Annual Review of Psychology 45: 451–485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 “Seeing Unique Hues.” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 22: 2143–2153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay
1969 Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger W., and Eric H. Lenneberg
1954 “A Study in Language and Cognition.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49: 454–462. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buck, Steven L., and Tanner DeLawyer
2014 “Dark versus Bright Equilibrium Hues: Rod and Cone Biases.” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 31: A75–A81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collier, Georg A.
1973 “ Review of “Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution ”. Language 49: 245–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Valois, Russell L., Karen K. De Valois, Eugene Switkes, and Luke Mahon
1997 “Hue Scaling of Isoluminant and Cone-Specific Lights.” Vision Research 37: 885–897. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairchild, Mark D.
2013 Color Appearance Models. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foote, Katharina G., and Steven L. Buck
2014 “Rod Hue Biases for Foveal Stimuli on CRT Displays.” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 31: A23–A26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuld, Kenneth, John S. Werner, and Bill R. Wooten
1983 “The Possible Elemental Nature of Brown.” Vision Research 23: 631–637. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thorsten, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2006 “Color Scaling of Discs and Natural Objects at Different Luminance Levels.” Visual Neuroscience 23: 603–610. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hurvich, Leo M., and Dorothea Jameson
1955 “Some Quantitative Aspects of an Opponent-Colors Theory. II. Brightness, Saturation, and Hue in Normal and Dichromatic Vision.” Journal of the Optical Society of America 45: 602–616. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Kimberly A.
2010 “Where in the World Color Survey is the Support for the Hering Primaries as the Basis for Color Categorization?” In Color Ontology and Color Science, ed. by Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen, 179–202. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Kimberly A., and Roy G. D’Andrade
1997 “It’s Not Really Red, Green, Yellow, Blue: An Inquiry into Perceptual Color Space.” In Color Categories in Thought and Language, ed. by Clyde N. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, 295–319. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, Paul, and Chad K. McDaniel
1978 “The Linguistic Significance of the Meanings of Basic Color Terms.” Language 54: 610–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuehni, Rolf G.
2001 “Focal Colors and Unique Hues.” Color Research & Application 26: 171–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 “Focal Color Variability and Unique Hue Stimulus Variability.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 5: 409–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Unique Hues and Their Stimuli – State of the Art.” Color Research & Application 39: 279–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuehni, Rolf G., Renzo Shamey, Mara Mathews, and Brandi Keene
2010 “Perceptual Prominence of Hering’s Chromatic Primaries.” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 27: 159–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kulp, Thomas D., and Kenneth Fuld
1995 “The Prediction of Hue and Saturation for Non-Spectral Lights.” Vision Research 35: 2967–2983. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindsey, Delwin T., and Angela M. Brown
2009 “World Color Survey Color Naming Reveals Universal Motifs and their Within-Language Diversity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 106: 19785–19790. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindsey, Delwin T., Angela M. Brown, David H. Brainard, and Coren L. Apicella
2015 “Hunter-Gatherer Color Naming Provides New Insight into the Evolution of Color Terms.” Current Biology 25: 2441–2446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Hadza Color Terms Are Sparse, Diverse, and Distributed, and Presage the Universal Color Categories Found in Other World Languages.” i-Perception 7: 6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mollon, John D.
2009 “A Neural Basis for Unique Hues?” Current Biology 19: R441–R442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munsell, Albert H.
1912 “A Pigment Color System and Notation.” The American Journal of Psychology 23: 236–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olkkonen, Maria K., Christoph Witzel, Thorsten Hansen, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2010 “Categorical Color Constancy for Real Surfaces.” Journal of Vision 10: 9. 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ovenston, Clara A.
1998 The Scaling and Discrimination of Contrast Colours. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Philipona, David L., and J. Kevin O’Regan
2006 “Color Naming, Unique Hues, and Hue Cancellation Predicted from Singularities in Reflection Properties.” Visual Neuroscience 23: 331–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quinn, Paul C., J. L. Rosano, and Bill R. Wooten
1988 “Evidence that Brown is Not an Elemental Color.” Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 43: 156–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regier, Terry, Paul Kay, and Richard S. Cook
2005 “Focal Colors are Universal After All.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 102: 8386–8391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regier, Terry, Paul Kay, and Naveen Khetarpal
2007 “Color Naming Reflects Optimal Partitions of Color Space.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 104: 1436–1441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosch Heider, Eleanor
1972 “Universals in Color Naming and Memory.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 93: 10–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sternheim, Charles E., and Robert M. Boynton
1966 “Uniqueness of Perceived Hues Investigated with a Continuous Judgmental Technique.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 72: 770–776. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stoughton, Cleo M., and Bevil R. Conway
2008 “Neural Basis for Unique Hues.” Current Biology 18: R698–R699. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sturges, Julia, and T. W. Allan Whitfield
1997 “Salient Features of Munsell Colour Space as a Function of Monolexemic Naming and Response Latencies.” Vision Research 37: 307–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valberg, Arne
2001 “Unique Hues: An Old Problem for a New Generation.” Vision Research 41: 1645–1657. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vazquez-Corral, Javier, J. Kevin O’Regan, Maria Vanrell, and Graham D. Finlayson
2012 “A New Spectrally Sharpened Sensor Basis to Predict Color Naming, Unique Hues, and Hue Cancellation.” Journal of Vision 12: 6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weiss, David, Christoph Witzel, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2017 “Determinants of Colour Constancy and the Blue Bias.” i-Perception 8: 6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph
2016 “New Insights Into the Evolution of Color Terms or an Effect of Saturation?” i-Perception 7: 5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, C. hristoph
(2018) “Misconceptions about colour categories.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, François Cinotti, and J. Kevin O’Regan
2015 “What Determines the Relationship Between Color Naming, Unique Hues, and Sensory Singularities: Illuminations, Surfaces, or Photoreceptors?” Journal of Vision 15: 8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, and Anna Franklin
2014 “Do Focal Colors Look Particularly “Colorful”?” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 31: A365–A374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2013 “Categorical Sensitivity to Color Differences.” Journal of Vision 13: 7. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, & Karl R. Gegenfurtner
2018a “Color Perception: Objects, Constancy and Categories.” Annual Review of Vision Science 4 : 475–499. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018b “Are Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue Perceptual Categories?” Vision Research. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, and Juliana Hammermeister
Saturation Affects Unique and Typical Hue Choices.” (under revision).
Witzel, Christoph, John Maule, and Anna Franklin
Are Red, Yellow, Green and Blue Particularly “Colorful”?” (under revision).
Witzel, Christoph, Carlijn van Alphen, Christoph Godau, and J. Kevin O’Regan
2016 “Uncertainty of Sensory Signal Explains Variation of Color Constancy.” Journal of Vision 16: 15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wuerger, Sophie M., and Kaida Xiao
2016 “Color Vision, Opponent Theory.” In Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, ed. by Ronnier Luo, 413–418. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Morimoto, Takuma, Yasuki Yamauchi & Keiji Uchikawa
2023. Invariant categorical color regions across illuminant change coincide with focal colors. Journal of Vision 23:2 ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
Mylonas, Dimitris, Serge Caparos & Jules Davidoff
2022. Augmenting a colour lexicon. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9:1 DOI logo
Witzel, Christoph
2019. Misconceptions About Colour Categories. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10:3 ► pp. 499 ff. DOI logo
Witzel, Christoph
2019. Variation of Saturation Across Hue Affects Unique and Typical Hue Choices. i-Perception 10:5 ► pp. 204166951987222 ff. DOI logo
Witzel, Christoph, John Maule & Anna Franklin
2019. Red, yellow, green, and blue are not particularly colorful. Journal of Vision 19:14 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. 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.