Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension

Forbes, Samuel H.; Plunkett, Kim

doi:10.1111/desc.13406

Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension

Forbes, Samuel H.; Plunkett, Kim

Authors

Dr Samuel Forbes samuel.forbes@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Kim Plunkett

Abstract

Recent work has investigated the origin of infant colour categories, showing pre-linguistic infants categorise colour even in the absence of colour words. These infant categories are similar but not identical to adult categories, giving rise to an important question about how infant colour perception changes with the learning of colour words. Here we present two novel paradigms in which 12- and 19-month-old participants learning English as their first language were assessed on their perception of colour, while data on their colour word comprehension were also collected. Results indicate that participants' perception of colours close to the colour category boundaries dramatically change after colour word learning. The results highlight the shift made from infant colour categories to adult-like linguistically mediated colour categories that accompanies colour word learning.

Citation

Forbes, S. H., & Plunkett, K. (2023). Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension. Developmental Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13406

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 19, 2023
Online Publication Date	May 1, 2023
Publication Date	2023
Deposit Date	May 12, 2023
Publicly Available Date	May 12, 2023
Journal	Developmental Science
Print ISSN	1363-755X
Electronic ISSN	1467-7687
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13406
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1174643

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.