Psychological Development and Education ›› 2016, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (1): 1-8.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2016.01.01

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Does Categorical Perception of Color Depend on Learned Categories or Color Discrimination?

ZHONG Weifang1,2, RU Taotao2, MO Lei2   

  1. 1. Guangdong Justice Police Vocational College, Guangzhou 510520, China;
    2. Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China
  • Online:2016-01-15 Published:2016-01-15

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Abstract: The present study investigated whether right visual field (RVF) lateralized categorical perception (CP) of color depends on learned categories or color discrimination. Experiment 1 asked participants to finish a color discrimination task to distinguish four gradual colors, such as dark green, light green, light blue and dark blue, into four categories firstly, and then to complete a visual search task. The reaction times data showed that there was a significant RVF color CP in the whole and the early part of visual search task, suggesting that the RVF color CP depended on learned categories primed by color discrimination task, rather than color discrimination. Experiment 2 asked participants to finish a color discrimination task to distinguish four gradual blues into two categories, and to complete a visual search task before and after the discrimination task. The previous studies have shown that, distinguishing the four blues into the same two categories by learning lexical categories could produce RVF color CP. However, the result of this experiment showed that there was no such RVF color CP in the visual search task after the color discrimination task, suggesting that RVF color CP depended on learned categories rather than color discrimination. In short, the present study showed that RVF color CP depended on learned categories rather than color discrimination, promoting the study on the relationship between language and perception.

Key words: whorf hypothesis, color categorical perception, lexical category, learned category, color discrimination

CLC Number: 

  • B844

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