Testing the Cross-Cultural Generality of Hering's Theory of Color Appearance

This study examines the cross-cultural generality of Hering's (1878/1964) color-opponent theory of color appearance. English-speaking and Somali-speaking observers performed variants of two paradigms classically used to study color-opponency. First, both groups identified similar red, green, blue, and yellow unique hues. Second, 25 English-speaking and 34 Somali-speaking observers decomposed the colors present in 135 Munsell color samples into their component Hering elemental sensations—red,green,blue, yellow, white, and black—or else responded “no term.” Both groups responded no term for many samples, notably purples. Somali terms for yellow were often used to name colors all around the color circle, including colors that are bluish according to Hering's theory. Four Somali Grue speakers named both green and blue elicitation samples by their term for green. However, that term did not name the union of all samples called blue or green by English speakers. A similar pattern was found among three Somali Achromatic speakers, who called the blue elicitation sample black or white. Thus, color decomposition by these Somali-speaking observers suggests a lexically influenced re-dimensionalization of color appearance space, rather than a simple reduction of the one proposed by Hering. Even some Somali Green-Blue speakers, whose data were otherwise similar to English, showed similar trends in yellow and blue usage. World Color Survey data mirror these results. These within- and cross-cultural violations of Hering's theory do not challenge the long-standing view that universal sensory processes mediate color appearance. However, they do demonstrate an important contribution of language in the human understanding of color.     

Colour blindness adversely impacts face recognition

ABSTRACT

Whether colour information contributes to the process of face recognition remains controversial. We examine this question here by evaluating the face recognition performance of individuals who are colour blind. Specifically, we compared the performance profile of colour blind and matched control individuals on a colour face recognition task where shape information was progressively degraded. The colour blind participants performed significantly more poorly than controls on this task, as revealed through multiple dependent measures. There was, however, no difference between these two groups on a standardized grayscale control task of face recognition, ruling out a generic face recognition deficit. These results both uncover a face recognition deficit in colour blind individuals and provide evidence for the contribution of colour to everyday facial recognition.