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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
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2022. Augmenting a colour lexicon. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9:1 DOI logo
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