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. 179–208

Chapter 10
ColCat

A color categorization digital archive and research wiki

| University of California, Irvine, USA
The ColCat Wiki (http://​colcat​.calit2​.uci​.edu/) is a multidisciplinary research platform featuring a new corpus of color categorization survey data from a variety of languages and language dialects. The Wiki’s contents can be examined, searched, downloaded and extended through non-commercial scientific investigations of human color categorization behaviors across ethnolinguistic groups. Launched in 2016 to make available unpublished raw data from Robert E. MacLaury’s color categorization archive, the ColCat database and its Wiki interface continues to grow and evolve as a public-access teaching and research platform for collaborative scientific investigations on color categorization behaviors. The ultimate aim of the ColCat Wiki is to serve as a repository of color categorization data and a collaborative workspace. This article summarizes properties of the wiki and its data, including database features that permit novel empirical research in the domain of global color categorization.
Keywords: ColCat Wiki , color categorization, color naming, Mesoamerican Color Survey, World Color Survey
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Robert E. MacLaury color categorization archive
    • 2.1MacLaury’s Mesoamerican Color Survey
    • 2.2MacLaury’s Multinational Color Survey
    • 2.3An overview of some specific ColCat Wiki Database features
    • 2.4ColCat research participants
    • 2.5Summary of the archive’s data collection tasks
  • 3.ColCat and WCS surveyed regions compared
  • 4.Three important research directions possible using the ColCat archive
    • 4.1Exploring how color lexicons vary across dialects of a given language
    • 4.2Investigating normative color naming patterns when only a small participant sample is available
    • 4.3Analyzing color lexicons that might reflect alternative cognitive emphases compared to hue-based color categorization systems
  • 5.Using the ColCat Wiki and some file formats available for download
    • 5.1Digitized computer-addressable data for download
    • 5.2Other ColCat data available for download
  • 6.Typical file organization formats of ColCat data in scanned .pdf image files
    • 6.1Naming task image files
    • 6.2Focus task image files
    • 6.3Color term mapping task image files
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.10jam
References
Batchelder, W. H., and R. Anders
2012 “Cultural Consensus Theory: Comparing Different Concepts of Cultural Truth.” Journal of Mathematical Psychology 56 (5): 316–332. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Batchelder, W. H., and A. K. Romney
1988 “Test Theory Without an Answer Key.” Psychometrika 53: 71–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, B., and P. Kay
1969 Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bimler, D.
2007 “From Color Naming to a Language Space: An Analysis of Data from the World Color Survey.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 7 (3): 173–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bonnardel, V.
2006 “Color Naming and Categorization in Inherited Color Vision Deficiencies.” Visual Neuroscience 23: 637–643. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deshpande, P. S., and K. A. Jameson
2017 “Investigating Color Categorization Behaviors in Korean–English Bilinguals.” UC Irvine Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Technical Report Series MBS 17–06.Google Scholar
Deshpande, P. S., S. Tauber, S. M. Chang, S. Gago, and K. A. Jameson
2016 “Digitizing a Large Corpus of Handwritten Documents Using Crowdsourcing and Cultural Consensus Theory.” International Journal of Internet Science 11 (1): 8–32.Google Scholar
Fider, N. A., L. Narens, K. A. Jameson, and N. L. Komarova
2016 “A Numerical Approach for Defining Basic Color Terms and Color Category Best Exemplars.” UC Irvine Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Technical Report Series MBS 16–02.Google Scholar
Jameson, K. A., N. A. Benjamin, S. M. Chang, P. S. Deshpande, S. Gago, I. G. Harris, Y. Jiao, and S. Tauber
2015 “Mesoamerican Color Survey Digital Archive.” In Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, Volume 2, ed. by Ronnier Luo, 909–921. New York: Springer. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Jameson, K. A., P. S. Deshpande, S. Tauber, S. M. Chang, and S. Gago
2016b “Using Individual Differences to Better Determine Normative Responses from Crowdsourced Transcription Tasks: An Application to the R. E. MacLaury Color Categorization Archive.” Human Vision and Electronic Imaging 21: 1–9. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Jameson, K. A., S. Gago, P. S. Deshpande, N. A. Benjamin, S. M. Chang, S. Tauber, Y. Jiao, I. G. Harris, Z. Xiang, B. B. Huynh, H. Ke, W. J. Lee, and R. E. MacLaury
2016a The Robert E. MacLaury Color Categorization (ColCat) Digital Archive. [URL] Irvine, Calif.: The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).
Jameson, K. A., and A. K. Romney
1990 “Consensus on Semiotic Models of Alphabetic Systems.” Journal of Quantitative Anthropology 2 (4): 289–304.Google Scholar
Kay, P., B. Berlin, L. Maffi, W. Merrifield, and R. Cook
2009 The World Color Survey. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI.Google Scholar
Lindsey, D. T., and A. M. Brown
2009 “World Color Survey Color Naming Reveals Universal Motifs and their Within-language Diversity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. 106: 19785–19790. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacLaury, R. E.
1997 Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
1986 Color in Mesoamerica, Vol. 1: A Theory of Composite Categorization. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Available from: UMI University Microfilms, No. 8718073.Google Scholar
1992 “From Brightness to Hue: An Explanatory Model of Color Category Evolution.” Current Anthropology 33: 137–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moore, C. C., A. K. Romney, and T. L. Hsia
2002 “Cultural, Gender, and Individual Differences in Perceptual and Semantic Structures of Basic Colors in Chinese and English.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 2 (1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munsell Book of Color, Glossy Edition
n.d. X-Rite. [URL]
Regier, T., P. Kay, and N. Khetarpal
2009 “Color Naming and the Shape of Color Space.” Language 85: 884–892. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romney, A. K., S. C. Weller, and W. H. Batchelder
1986 “Culture as Consensus: A Theory of Culture and Informant Accuracy.” American Anthropologist 88 (2): 313–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sayim, B., K. A. Jameson, N. Alvarado, and M. K. Szeszel
2005 “Semantic and Perceptual Representations of Color: Evidence of a Shared Color-Naming Function.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 5 (3/4): 427–486. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Bosten, Jenny M.
2022. Do You See What I See? Diversity in Human Color Perception. Annual Review of Vision Science 8:1 ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo
Jameson, Kimberly A. & Michael A. Webster
2019. Color and culture: Innovations and insights since Basic Color Terms—Their Universality and Evolution (1969). Color Research & Application 44:6 ► pp. 1034 ff. DOI logo
Lindsey, Delwin T. & Angela M. Brown
2021. Lexical Color Categories. Annual Review of Vision Science 7:1 ► pp. 605 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 november 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.