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This study investigated the influence of information structure on surface acoustical parameters in Taiwan Mandarin. There were two experiments, i.e., GN and GC experiment. In GN experiment, the noun phrases placed in initial (NP1) or medial (NP2) position in a Mandarin sentence were elicited through a game. Subjects answered experimenter’s questions, e.g., ‘‘What is on pink truck’s right side?’’ according to colored pictures in a 4 by 4 matrix. New or given information was placed on either NP1 or NP2. In GC experiment, subjects corrected or confirmed expeirmenter’s description, such as Pink truck is yellow IDs right side, by placing either contrastive information on the color term and given information on noun (cg), given information on the color term and contrastive information on noun (gc), given information on both color term and noun (gg), or contrastive information on both color term and noun (cc). Results showed that the F0 range expansion and duration lengthening were observed on syllables carrying...

Different versions of the Stroop test are used; however, for most versions of the Stroop test, there are no estimations of reliability. In the present study, stimuli were presented singly on a computer screen. 55 Swiss German subjects were tested. Test-retest reliabilities of ‘XXXX’ strings and conflicting color words were evaluated. Response latencies and Stroop interference were quite reliable. Single-stimulus presentation made it possible also to estimate internal consistency, which was high for classical Stroop interference in this format.

The research investigated the implicit sequential learning under the condition in which Stroop task was used. A stimulus of color name printed in incongruent color was presented on CRT monitor on each trial. The task was naming the color in which the word was printed. The color names were presented randomly and the printed colors were presented according to either a high structured or a low structured sequence. The learning of both sequences was observed when assessed through performance measure (decrease or increase in reaction times). The learning may be said to have occurred implicitly since the subjects trained under the low structured sequence proved to be almost unaware of the nature of the sequence and they performed no better than control subjects in a cued-recall task (generate the sequence). These results are considered important in examining the conditions in which sequential events can be learned implicitly.

The areas of the brain that mediate knowledge about objects were investigated by measuring changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) using positron emission tomography (PET). Subjects generated words denoting colors and actions associated with static, achromatic line drawings of objects in one experiment, and with the written names of objects in a second experiment. In both studies, generation of color words selectively activated a region in the ventral temporal lobe just anterior to the area involved in the perception of color, whereas generation of action words activated a region in the middle temporal gyrus just anterior to the area involved in the perception of motion. These data suggest that object knowledge is organized as a distributed system in which the attributes of an object are stored close to the regions of the cortex that mediate perception of those attributes.

Summary.-A modified Stroop arrangement consisting of color names printed in ink of a dXerent color was used in a release from the proactive inhibition (PI) paradigm. In Exp. 1, half of the subjects were informed prior to a trial whether they were to recall the colors or the color names while the remaining half were not informed in advance. After three trials, half of the subjects were shifted to recalling the other material while control subjects continued with the same recall material. Analysis indicated that (1) when subjects were informed in advance, PI release was found in a color name to color shift, but no PI release was found with a shift from color to color name, and (2) when subjects were not informed in advance, no PI release was observed in either shift condition. Exp. 2 replicated the not-informed condition and introduced a longer stimulus-exposure duration for 160 undergraduates. Except for higher recall scores, the same results were obtained. The results were interpreted in terms of differences in the ktnds of encoding operations performed on colors and color names. The release from proactive inhibition (PI) effect (Wickens, Born, & Allen, 1963; Wickens, 1970, 1972) has been used to identlfy what attributes of a stimulus come to be represented in short-term memory. In a typical short-term memory experiment, if a subject is given a series of trials involving similar material, performance declines over trials; however, if there is a change in the nature of the material, there is usually an abrupt improvement in recall. The decline over trials is usually attributed to interference produced by performing similar encoding operations on the similar material. Release from PI is taken to mean that the new material has been encoded differently such that there is little interference from the old material. Allen (1983, 1984) reported two experirnenrs on release from PI in which the recall material was either strips of colored paper or the names of colors printed on a card. Both experiments yielded asymmetrical release effects. Requiring subjects to shift from rechg the names of colors (N) to recahg color strips (C) resulted in PI release (an N-C shift); however, no release was found when the shift was from colors to the recall of names of colors (a C-N shift). An explanation for the effects of asymmetrical release involves explicating the differences in encoding operations which are performed on colors

When speakers adopt colors from another language, do they only borrow certain lexical forms or do they absorb whole concepts? And if both a lexical term and a color category are borrowed, are they both borrowed at the same time or is one of them borrowed first? In this paper, I address the question of how color categories are borrowed, providing evidence from Gyeli ‘Pygmy’ hunter-gatherers (PHGs) in contact with Bantu farmers in southern Cameroon. The data shows rich variability in borrowing patterns. Color categories are not borrowed in toto, but only partially, i.e. the resulting color category in the recipient language only partially coincides with the color category in the donor language. Further, the borrowing of a color category may or may not be in conjunction with the borrowing of a color term from the recipient language. While Gyeli PHGs borrow a lexical term first from neighboring Bantu farmer languages and then expand the color category in a second step, the path of borrowing of Bantu farmers from colonial languages is the inverse. Farmer languages first adopt a new color category, but reject loanwords. Their second step in acquiring a new color is to find a name for the new color category.

It is widely known that color names across the world's languages tend to be organized into a neat hierarchy with a small set of "basic names" featuring in a comparatively fixed order across linguistic societies. However, to date, the basic names have only been defined through a set of linguistic principles. There is no statistical definition that quantitatively separates the basic names from the rest of the color words across languages. Here we present a rigorous statistical analysis of the World Color Survey database hosting color word information from 110 non-industrialized languages. The central result is that those names for which a population of individuals show a larger overall agreement across languages turn out to be the basic ones exactly reproducing the color name hierarchy and, thereby, providing, for the first time, an empirical definition of the basic color names.

In this study we present evidence which supports the view that reading mechanisms, if implicit assessed, are available also in the presence of a severe deficit of spatial awareness. A Stroop-like task was performed by a right brain-damaged patient affected by severe extrapersonal neglect and neglect dyslexia. In reading words and color words, the patient showed the usual pattern of neglect errors; omission, substitution and addition errors. However, when asked to name the colors in which color words were written, naming time was found to be affected by the meaning of those words he was not able to read correctly. The pattern of results in MD and in a group of normal subjects, who performed a modified version of the Stroop test performed by MD, have been interpreted as evidence of MD's implicit reading of the left-hand letters of color words during the Stroop test. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed. Moreover, the comparison between the performance of MD and the performance of another group of normal subjects suggested that implicit processing in MD was carried out at a lower level of efficiency than in normals.

Used as a redundant code, color is shown to be advantageous in visual search tasks. It enhances attention, detection, and recall of information. Neuropsychological and neurophysiological findings have shown color and spatial perception to be interrelated functions. Studies on eye movements show that colored symbols are easier to detect and that eye fixations are more correctly directed to color-coded symbols. Usually between 5 and 15 colors have been found useful in classification tasks, but this umber can be increased to between 20 to 30 by careful selection of colors, and by a subject's practice with the identification task and familiarity with the particular colors. Recent neurophysiological findings concerning the language-concept connection in color suggest that color concept retrieval would be enhanced by free color naming or by the use of natural associations between color concepts and color words. To test this hypothesis, we had subjects give their own free associations to a set of 35 colors presented on a display. They were able to identify as many as 30 colors without training.

Subjects can name color words faster than they can name color patches. To account for that effect, a generic model of naming is described which assumes that words access the mental lexicon directly, whereas color patches do so only indirectly via an initial imaginal or semantic representation. However, Lund (1927) reported that the naming advantage for words disappeared when all the items to be named on a page were the same (i.e., they were blocked). In the present study, three experiments are reported that were designed to provide a clearer empirical definition of Lund's blocking effect and to ascertain the extent to which it requires a modification of the generic model. The blocked lists had 50 items arranged into 10 blocks, with each block homogeneous with respect to color. The block lengths were either all a predictable length of 5 items or they varied randomly from 1 to 9 items. The data indicated the following: (1) The blocking effect occurred even when the task required a full identification of each item, and (2) the blocking effect was confined to within-block transitions. Blocking seemed to eliminate the word advantage by allowing the subject to re-use the lexical entry used for the immediately prior items, which is consistent with the generic model.

The Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT; Stroop, 1935) is one of the oldest and most commonly used tests in psychology for examining executive functions and response inhibition. There are a number of versions of the task, several of which have been translated into different languages and modified for use with diverse populations, including children, adults, and clinical patients. In the standard form of the task, a participant is asked to (1) read words that are the names of colors (i.e., word reading), (2) name the color of ink patches (i.e., color naming), and (3) name the color of the ink in which incongruent color words are printed (e.g., say “red” when the word green is printed in red ink). This latter condition is thought to require response inhibition, as one must inhibit the easier and more automatic word reading in order to name the color of the ink (see MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000). Keywords: stroop effect; stroop interference; executive function; response inhibition

An important characteristic of automatic processing is its uncontrollability. The Stroop phenomenon is regarded as a prototypical example of this characteristic of automatic processing, hence, the Stroop effect should not change when the percentages of color words versus neutral stimuli are manipulated to induce controlled processing. We found that Stroop interference decreased as the percentage of color words increased. Furthermore, the magnitude of the inhibitory component of the Stroop effect was negatively correlated with the percentage of color words; the facilitatory component was insensitive to the manipulation. These results suggest that the Stroop effect is controllable (see Logan, 1980) and that the locus of control is postlexical. The results also suggest that facilitation and inhibition are produced by different mechanisms and challenge those models of the Stroop phenomenon (e.g., Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990; Phaf, Van der Heijden, & Hudson, 1990) that assume that a single processing mechanism causes facilitation and inhibition and that control affects facilitation and inhibition alike (Logan, 1980).

One hundred and sixty-seven Chinese, 24 Malay and 24 Indian children of Singapore, bilingual in both English and their mother tongues (Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, respectively) were tested with the Stroop color-naming tasks in both languages under intralingual and interlingual conditions. The interference effect was found for each and every language, with respect to both intra- and inter-language conditions. The Chinese words were not found to cause more interference than the English words, and the reduction in interference in the switch language situation was the same for all three bilingual groups. These results contradict the predictions made by the orthography-specific hypothesis in which logographic script is expected to induce greater intralanguage interference than the sound-based scripts (syllabary and alphabet) and the reduction of interference from intra- to interlanguage condition is expected to increase as the difference between two orthographic structures increases. A further analysis suggests that the speed of decoding color words and the speed of generating color names may combine to determine the magnitude of the Stroop effect. Under such a conceptualization, it is meaningless to assign any important role to the orthographic factor in the interpretation of the bilingual Stroop effect. In fact, the Stroop effect itself, regardless of the context of bilingualism, is better handled by an activation-suppression model of selective attention which accounts for all data observed in the present study as well as those observed in the previous literature.

Six Korsakoffs amnesics, three mixed amnesics, eight normal controls were taught the meaning of “bice”, the word for a particular shade of blue-green. The conceptual interpretation that the Korsakoffs developed for “bice” differed in three respects from the one that the controls developed. (1) Although both Korsakoffs and controls applied the term more liberally to pens than to other objects, two of the Korsakoffs showed an extreme form of this tendency. (2) The Korsakoffs tended to generalize more broadly along the spectral dimension in using the term. (3) Whereas there was a positive relationship, in the data for the controls, between measures of syntactic and semantic awareness concerning “bice”, there was no such relationship in the Korsakoffs data. It was concluded that the Korsakoffs had difficulty mastering the new word, difficulty specifically in integrating their representation for the word with the rest of their lexical knowledge.

— The validity of color name matching in analyzing gamut mapping algorithms is described in this paper. The performances of three types of gamut mapping algorithms (cusp scaling, clipping, and categorical weighting) are evaluated in a psychophysical experiment from the viewpoint of color name matching. Based on this evaluation, we have found that cusp-scaling algorithm is capable of controlling lightness reasonably well, compensating for a decrease in chroma caused by the difference in the size of device gamut between a source and a destination device. Ranking of reproducible performance by the three gamut mapping algorithms in the psychophysical experiment is arrived at on the basis of color name matching.

The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrotsby I.M. Pepperberg, Harvard University Press, 2000. £24.95 (434 pages) ISBN 0 674 00051 XChapter 1 of the Kama Sutra suggests that in order to live a healthy, aesthetically pleasing life, one should spend at least one hour every morning teaching parrots to speak. In contrast to most unrefined cognitive scientists, Irene Pepperberg has taken this maxim to heart. Since 1977, she and her colleagues at the University of Arizona have spent nearly ten hours a day teaching parrots – or more specifically, one African grey parrot, Alex – to speak. The culmination of her 23 years of aesthetic living is The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots.The Alex Studies reads as a historical account of Pepperberg's work with Alex, beginning with the day that Alex was plucked at random from among his pet store cagemates to become part of scientific history. As we read in Chapter 2, Pepperberg attributes Alex's success not to a lucky choice on the part of the pet store staff, but to the use of a novel training paradigm which she calls the Model/Rival (M/R) technique. In this training paradigm, the subject watches as two human experimenters interact in a way that imitates the type of responses that the subject is meant to learn. Thus, one of the experimenters asks the other a question about an object (e.g. ‘what color?’). If the learner answers correctly, she is praised and receives the object as a reward. If she answers incorrectly or unclearly, the teacher removes the object and scolds her. In this way, the other experimenter serves both as the model for Alex's behavior and as his rival for the experimenter's attention. Alex, who wants access to the objects and the experimenters, soon gets in on the action, mimicking the labels used by the experimenter and the training begins. Once trained on new labels and concepts using the M/R technique, Alex is then tested in a series of novel generalization tasks.The chapters that follow demonstrate the success of the M/R technique and the remarkable degree of Alex's cognitive abilities. At present, Alex can produce and comprehend over 50 words, including words for colors, materials and shapes. He can make simple requests (e.g. ‘want cork’). He is able to count up to six. He passes standard tests of object permanence and understands relative concepts like same/different and bigger/smaller. Each chapter describes Alex's training and testing in painstaking detail and provides numerous examples that go beyond the statistics and give the reader a true sense of Alex's mastery of different tasks. Throughout, Pepperberg is careful to tackle alternative explanations and cautious about her interpretations of Alex's performance.Although Alex's capacities will undoubtedly impress even the most skeptical of readers, those well-versed in the cognitive sciences may be left somewhat dissatisfied with Pepperberg's discussion of Alex's accomplishments. For although she often compares Alex's performance to that of other animals, especially language-trained primates and marine mammals, she rarely applies Alex's performance to unanswered questions in the fields of human cognition and development. In Chapter 7, for example, Pepperberg examines whether Alex can understand and use numerical concepts. Although she ties his striking performance to the literature on subitizing abilities in animals, she fails to relate Alex's numerical abilities to the current debate about number representation in non-human animals and prelinguistic infants1.xBuilding a cognitive creature from a set of primitives: evolutionary and developmental insights. Hauser, M.D and Carey, S. : 51–106See all References, 2.xPsychological foundations of number: numerical competence in human infants. Wynn, K. Trends Cognit. Sci. 1998; 2: 296–303Abstract | Full Text | Full Text PDF | PubMed | Scopus (127)See all References. Similarly, Alex's impressive ability to learn words is all too rarely linked up with work on children's word learning. As we learn in Chapter 4, Alex seemed to master his first color terms quite easily, but human children struggle to learn their first color labels3xLearning color words involves learning a system of mappings. Sandhofer, C.M and Smith, L.B. Dev. Psychol. 1999; 35: 668–679Crossref | PubMedSee all References3. Why does Alex learn color words so easily? Does his representation of color concepts differ from those of young children? In short, although Pepperberg continuously gives the reader a great appreciation of Alex's striking performance, she rarely provides us with much insight into the representations underlying this performance.Pepperberg intends her work to be a ‘panoramic view of [the] data’ (p. ix),and it is certainly that and even more. Although her cautious intepretations may frustrate those cognitive scientists interested in her take on the nature of avian conceptual representations, The Alex Studies is a rich and well-organized summary of all the work with Alex to date and provides an indispensable reference for anyone interested in her research program.

The controversial status of goluboi as a basic color term is discussed. Fuzzy logic alone cannot reliably attribute basic status to goluboi. Recent linguistic studies support a single basic blue category. Psychophysical data on color-space distances and color naming are currently ambiguous in this regard.

Recent studies of selective attention in schizophrenia patients suggest a particular pattern of single-trial Stroop performance: increased facilitation but not interference in reaction times (RTs), combined with increased error interference. Our Stroop task analysis suggests that this pattern can be explained by a selective attention deficit if one accounts for (1) performance in the congruent condition; (2) the nature of the neutral stimulus; (3) the relationship between accuracy and RT; and (4) response set effects, To test these hypotheses, we examined Stroop performance in 40 DSM-IV schizophrenia patients and 20 healthy control subjects, using a range of neutral stimuli (color patches, noncolor words, color words not in the response set), The findings confirmed several of our predictions and the results were consistent with the hypothesis that abnormal Stroop performance in schizophrenia reflects a failure to adequately attend to the task-appropriate stimulus dimension (color), This inattention affects both the congruent and incongruent conditions and multiple points in the information processing pathway.

or in addition to later stages, increased facilitation should be present even with non-word neut...J[ stimuli. To address these questions, we examined Stroop performance in DSM-IV schizophrenia patients and normal controls, usinga runge of neutral stimuli (colorsquares, non-color words, color words not in the response set). The findings suggest that disturbances in selective attention among schizophrenia patientsoperate at multiple stages during infonnation processing.

The time course of visual word processing was investigated in two tasks differing in whether words were "selected for action" (Allport, 1989). Using identical displays in which a square color patch appeared at fixation with either 2, 4, or 8 flanking words appearing at any of the 8 sides and corners, subjects performed either a Stroop color-naming task or a word search task requiring detection of a color name among the flanking words by either a manual presence/absence response (Experiment 1) or a vocal naming response (Experiment 2). The color-naming task produced Stroop effects indicating parallel word processing in multiword displays, whereas the word search task produced evidence consistent with serial, self-terminating search requiring allocation of spatial attention. The differences in word processing across tasks are reconciled using Allport's concept of selection for action and extended to neuropsychological evidence on attention.

Children's attention to knowledge-acquisition events was examined in 4 experiments in which children were taught novel facts and subsequently asked how long they had known the new information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds tended to claim they had known novel animal facts for a long time and also reported that other children would know the novel facts. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, using facts associated with chemistry demonstrations. In Experiments 3 and 4, children were taught new color words. 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, distinguished between novel and familiar color words, reporting they had not known the novel words before the test session, but they had always known the familiar words. 4-year-olds in Experiment 4 were better able to distinguish novel and familiar color words when the teaching of the novel words was an explicit and salient part of the procedure.

Many children experience great difficulty in learning their first color word. In contrast, once children have learned 1 color word, they learn additional color words more easily. This striking fact rises the question of whether children who do not know color words have conceptual color categories capable of supporting inferences about word meaning. In 3 experiments 2-year-olds were provided with tasks that required them to base inferences on color or to map things onto color. Half the children comprehended at least 1 color word, and the remaining children comprehended none. In all experiments, the children in both groups succeeded on the color tasks. It was argued that children who do not know color words have the conceptual foundation necessary to base inferences on color but have specific constraints against basing inferences about word meaning on color.

Linguistic contrast of the form "It's not X; it's Y" is often used by adults to correct children's naming errors. The present studies examined whether such linguistic contrast could help preschoolers learn a novel color name. In Experiment 1, a novel color term was contrasted only once with 1 or 2 familiar color names. Contrasting a new color term with children's own label for the stimulus color helped 5-year-olds learn the new term, but contrasting the new term with randomly chosen familiar color terms did not. For 4-year-olds, neither kind of contrast helped much. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that when the contrastive information was presented more than once, even 3- and 4-year-olds performed much like the 5-year-olds in Experiment 1. Together, these findings suggest that contrasting a new term with a child's own term facilitates the acquisition of the new term, perhaps because it gives the child specific information about how two terms are related in meaning.

Translational models of the Stroop effect (Virzi & Egeth, 1985) predict that Stroop interference can be eliminated if subjects can be induced to process target colors using a coding system separate from the coding system used to process distractors. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, we attempted to eliminate the need for subjects to translate target colors to verbal codes when responding to Stroop stimuli. Before responding to verbal incongruent color word distractors, subjects practiced matching colors to irregular shapes. It was expected that subjects would use nonverbal codes to mediate responding in this task. After practice, subjects continued the matching task in the presence of incongruent color words. Stroop interference persisted, contrary to predictions. Because subjects reported adopting verbal strategies to perform the matching task, Experiment 2 was designed to control the verbal coding strategies that subjects employed. Before responding to Stroop distractor stimuli, subjects in the nonsense name group practiced using nonsense names to mediate the matching of shapes to colors; subjects in the actual name group used actual color names to mediate performance in the matching task. When incongruent color word distractors were introduced, Stroop interference was eliminated for subjects in the nonsense name group, but persisted for subjects in the actual name group. The results are interpreted as consistent with an outcome conflict (Navon & Miller, 1987) or a modified translational model of the Stroop effect.

The main purpose of this paper is to relate recent findings regarding the evolution of basic color term systems to current research in linguistic variation and language change. More specifically it is to provide in the area of lexical semantics a demonstration of the hypothesis that all linguistic change has its roots in synchronic heterogeneity of the speech community (cf. Weinreich, Labov & Herzog (1968: 188) for a general statement of this position, also many empirical demonstrations already reported, such as those by Labov (1972) and Wang (1969) in phonology and by Bickerton (1973) in syntax). Before taking up this topic, I summarize some recent revisions in the basic color term theory itself. (Ethnographic semantics, color terms, language variation, evolutionary universals in linguistic change.)

Shuswap speakers use one color term to name both pure yellow and pure green. The yellow-with-green category is not part of Berlin and Kay's empirically established sequence of basic color-category evolution, nor does it square with neurological facts that might explain the sequence. Although the category is rare throughout the world, it is widely diffused in the Pacific Northwest. Here diverse languages accepted the concept that yellow and green should be categorized under one name, but they accommodated the innovation by distinct cognitive strategies and they named it with unrelated terms.

The Stroop Color-word test was administered to two groups of bilinguals to assess the relative influence of interlingual versus intralingual interference. Subjects included 10 native Turkish speakers whose second language was English and 10 native English speakers who spoke Turkish fluently. Each subject was asked to vocalize color names in Turkish and in English, using a control list (XXX), a Turkish list, and an English list of color words written in a contrasting color ink from the meaning of the color word. Intralingual interference was greater than interlingual for American subjects, but Turks experienced both forms of interference almost equally. Overall interference was greater for Americans. Results suggest that interlingual interference may be related to familiarity with a language. Implications for assessing fluency in a second language are discussed.

Based on results from earlier research, the Stroop test appears to be a means for gaining insight into the specialized functions of the cerebral hemispheres as related to sex differences. This study was designed to determine whether sex differences continue to be present in a balanced design. Sixty-two psychology students responded to color words printed in incongruent colors when presented by a slide projector. Four mean scores comprising 15 responses in each condition, grouped word, grouped color, random word, and random color were computed for each subject. One half of the subjects responded to the grouped condition first, while the other half responded to the random condition first. Two variables were considered, sex and the order of presentation of random and grouped modes. Analyses of covariance of color response times over the categories of sex and order of presentation with word scores as covariates were performed for all conditions. For all individuals, response latency was consistently shorter when reading the word than when reporting the color. As in earlier studies, the covariate (word scores) was significantly related to the color sores. Sex differences were not found; however a significant difference was found in the analysis of the random color responses. When means were adjusted for sex and the covariate, subjects having the experience of the grouped experiment first scored faster than those performing for the first time. It appears that in this balanced design, practice improves time on color responses for both sexes.

Examination of the lexicalization of basic color terms in 10 different sign languages from 7 different sign language groups suggests that for naming colors sign languages follow universal patterns not dependent upon the channel of language expression and reception.

This is a paper concerned with investigating and discussing how the specialists' or consumers' groups perceive the color names and color differences of pile fabrics.The results obtained are as follows.(1) Specialists assigned most of color names to the colorimetric ones, but those perceived by consumers did not agree well with the colorimetric ones. A long term training for the specialists in the color recognition results in the exact recognition of the surface colors of pile fabrics and in the proper assignments of the color name. On the other hand, consumers do not realize the correct meanings of the tone adjectives for the lack of experience.(2) The color names perceived by specialists and consumers by the use of the standard color chips corresponded well to the colorimetric ones.(3) The correlation coefficient between the color differences perceived by specialists and the colorimetric ones was very high, but the coefficient for the consumers' was low. This fact also indicates as that specialists have established the standard colors for the judgement of color differences by a long term experience on the color differences.

In two experiments, introductory psychology students responded in two ways to three lists of 60 words printed in different colors. The lists consisted of color words and two sets of words associated with the colors (e.g., SKY, BLOOD, etc.). When the subjects responded by naming the color in which each word was printed, it took longer for the color word list than for either list of associates, i.e., the classical Stroop interference effect. The other response required the subjects to say words from one of the association lists which corresponded to the color in which each word was printed, e.g., they saw the word BLACK (or NIGHT, or COAL) printed inred ink, and had to respond by saying “blood.” Using this response, it took longest for the subjects to complete the list of words which were the same as those required as responses. Color words were somewhat less difficult, and the other association words were completed most quickly. The results do not pinpoint the locus of interference, but clarify additional assumptions which must be accepted to maintain alternative hypotheses.

The aim of the paper is to give an account of the similarity of colors as well as of their identity and individuation, even if the author’s comments will get their full share of meaning only within the horizon of a broader theory which so far is incomplete. In what follows we will take colors as they are given to us when we are directly acquainted with them, i.e., we will leave aside any consideration of colors in terms of physical or scientific theories and our way of dealing with their shades of color will be to take any two different ones as being two different colors. On the other hand, the problems we are confronted with will spring if these colors are given to us as simples. Let us start by assuming that we certainly know two different colors, A and B, which are such that their difference is the least one sufficing for them to be two colors given to us and not just one. Now, it can be asked whether these two colors are similar. What we do have is two different colors, even if they only differ minimally. To give an account of the two colors being similar one might be tempted to appeal to a traditional answer: they must have something common to both and something else, besides, which is why they are not the same but only similar. But we do not have this answer at hand since, in this case, to say that the two colors are minimally different is to say they are different altogether. But as least —it could be objected— they must have something in common for them both to be colors and not something else; e.g., they must have one and the same relation as intentional objects of vision, or be ideas intromitted by sight, as Locke understood this point, or something like this. To the above it can be pointed out that in saying that A and B are colors, we have not referred to anything common to both but, as opposed to this, we have just considered their being different; A and B are different but in a more basic way than that in which red, say, would differ from a sound. A and B are mutually different and, because they do differ, they are given to us; but red has to be already given to differ from a sound, i.e., it has already to be different from a color for it to be different from something else. Now, if we add to our list a third color, C, such that the three of them are again minimally different among themselves, this does not seem to help us to conclude that they are similar. Since, assuming A minimally to differ from C and C minimally to differ from A, we have again a case that can be reduced to the former one in which we had just two colors whit a minimal difference between them. But now, if we consider another possibility, one in which three colors, A, B, and C, are given to us such that A differs minimally from B, B differs minimally from C, but where C differs not minimally from A, we have an order, a line which can be lengthened by adding colors D, E, such that D differs minimally from C but not from B or A and E differs minimally from A but not from B, C or D etc. We claim that such an order is an example of similarity and, more precisely, of similarity among colors. A difficulty one is faced with in taking the above line of though is that one has a problem in finding a limit, unless an arbitrary one is fixed, in the ordering of colors similar to a given one. Experimental research, by Berlin and Kay, has shown that the above is certainly the case: once a color was chosen as the reference of a term, the totality of color samples similar to the one chosen could only be arbitrarily limited. But Berlin and Kay also found that there was nothing arbitrary in the selection of the best exemplars of color X. These so called color focuses seem to be constituted around a paradigm and to be integrated, firstly, by exemplars not similar to, but which differ minimally from, it and, secondly, although not always, by the paradigm itself. Now, which one of those colors functions as a paradigm, is arbitrary. If, besides, it coincides with the referent of a color term, the referent can be whichever of those colors which, among themselves, differ minimally; but once the referent is chosen it will be the same in any further occasion. A paradigm might be represented as a point, a focus, in a three dimensional space, around which would be located its possibly best copies at a minimal distance, each one of them differing minimally among themselves as well as from the paradigm. But, as has been said, there will also be copies which will not qualify as the best in virtue of their not being minimally different from this paradigm. But now, by what has been said, the paradigm color would fulfill its function with regard to colors different from it, but the possibility of its fulfilling the same function with respect to colors which are the same as it, cannot be excluded. If this is so, what would be the sense of talking of identical colors? Would they be the same and not several or would they just be similar in an ultimate degree? When we say, e.g., that at a certain time a surface has or shows a unique color, what we mean is that part of that surface has the same color as the other; it is the same red, say, as the other. In such a case, the color we are referring to by means of “red” is functioning as a paradigm with respect to the identity of the color of both parts of the surface. I.e. it is functioning, in this context, as an identity criterion and not as a criterion of exemplarity. But now, what can be done whit Putnam’s dictum “‘yellow’ as a thing predicate is indexical”? Since, certainly, in the case we have considered “red” has been taken as a predicate about surfaces, it carries it an indexical commitment. But if “red”, as a predicate, is indexical, this precludes that it names, each time it is used, a unique and indivisible property, some sort of sensible universal of which this and that surfaces would partake. No, what in each case it names is the property of this and of nothing else; the property of that and of nothing else. But with respect to which this is not distinguished from that. And now, again, we are confronted with a problem already mentioned: Are we dealing with just one or with several properties? Can several properties be identical without being just one? If several, will their identity be some sort of similarity of maximum degree? Husserl, as an example, gave a common answer to these questions: sameness is the limit approach by degrees of similarity. Since he thinks of similarity as a spatial coincidence by means of which a part of A covers a part of B —in that in which they are the same— while at the same time another part of A is different from another part of B —in that in which they differ— he can proceed with the image of a partial eclipse of B by A to obtain a total eclipse in which A completely covers B —when they are identical— but with both terms of this equality being transparent to each other. Even if this image is to be rejected, Husserl’s intention is to be taken into account: the diversity and individuality of colors which present themselves as the same on this and that surfaces has to be preserved, maintaining their sameness and, at the same time, their similarity and, so, their difference. The air of paradox within this project will settle once we consider this matter within the boundaries within which we have stated it. What we have said is that a color is given to us only if it is not to be confused with another color, i.e., where the distinction is made within the bounds of a certain category, that of color in our example. And, again, a color is individuated if it is different from other members of the same category, i.e., from another colors. And this can give us a starting point to account for the fact two surfaces are identical in color, in red, say, but different between themselves. Let us suppose, now, that we break into two halves a one colored surface. Surface A will be different from surface B. But the color of A and the color of B, with respect to their category, are still one and the same individual, since they do not differ. What happens is that the individuation of surfaces is not the same as that of colors. At a certain level we do have two individuals —the two red surfaces A and B; at another level we just have one individual —a color: red. And now, what we do have is that red, as a property of the two surfaces A and B, is two colors; but as being that color and no other, is just one individual color. We have thus answered the questions about the conflictive unity and diversity of color identity. With respect to colors, it cannot be said that they are the same F, where F would always be a general term. As has been shown, this F might, sometimes, be an individual term as when we say: “This color is the same red as that one.” As another result our former hypotheses, we might have the possible view that a color predicate be indexical or deictical since every time it will co-mention, so to say, a color which as a property always will be the same as this, the one pertaining to this individual, the one taken as a paradigm, so that there will be no possible world in which that color is not the same as this, know and chosen, in an actual world, as the referent of my color term. [J.A. Robles]

The present study utilizes an incongruent color-words paradigm, where color-words are briefly flashed either to the left or to the right of the center of futation. The hypothesis is that a greater conflict between the word and the color the word is written in will occur in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere, if the task of the subject is to report only the color. In previous studies, however, only behavioral measures, like vocal reaction time and error frequency, have been used to assess asymmetry. In the presented experiment we have added analysis of the 8–13 Hz EEG alpha difference between the hemispheres, predicting greater alpha reduction to the color-words in the left hemisphere, but not to the control stimuli. Twenty intact, male, dextrals participated. Results supported the prediction, witha 8.3% reduction of alpha activity in the left hemisphere to the color words, compared to a 1.9% reduction in the right hemisphere. No difference was found to the control stimuli.

Lexical reconstructions of Proto-Polynesian (Branstetter 1977), Proto-Miwok (Callaghan 1979), and Proto-Mayan (Fox 1977; Kaufman 1964, 1969) basic color term vocabularies are presented and compared. Although these reconstructed systems accord with the well-known Berlin and Kay (1969) color encoding sequence, they all contain a subtle distortion They generally are as large as color term systems found in contemporary daughter languages. Considering the additive nature of the color encoding sequence, these reconstructions are unlikely. Comparative linguistic evidence is presented suggesting that all three systems are over-reconstructed. Encoding sequences, then, prove to be instruments of considerable usefulness to add to the traditional tool kit of historical linguistics. [cognitive anthropology, color classification, language change, language universale, Mayan languages, Miwok languages, Polynesian languages]

A new functional response competition model to describe the cognitive processes underlying the Stroop phenomenon is proposed. The main challenge for any explanation is the asymmetry of the conflict, i.e. the fact that the meaning of the color word disturbs naming the color of an incongruent color-word-color stimulus far more than the irrelevant color disturbs reading the word. The model proposes that the organism processes both competing verbal responses by priming the relevant set and inhibiting the irrelevant set if both responses belong to different sets, and by computing internal delay-time differences if both responses belong to the same set. The model explains most of the existing data about the Stroop phenomenon and is in full accordance with present knowledge on selective attention, stimulus encoding, response selection, and psychological refractory period. It is confirmed by data of a Stroop experiment using a set of verbal color responses disjoint from the set of the stimulus color words. This experiment is based on the strategy often used in Stroop research to try to obtain a reversed Stroop effect in order to find an explanation of the Stroop effect. The data show full symmetry of competition, that is a Stroop effect and a reversed Stroop effect of about the same amount of increased reaction time.

Severely retarded boys entered this study already able to match colored patches to dictated color words and to name the colors orally. Initially they were unable to match printed color words with the colored patches or to their dictated names; neither could they name the printed words orally. Programs were designed to teach the boys to use individual anagram letters to construct the appropriate colors words when shown color patches. After learning the visual equivalences between colors and printed words, the boys demonstrated auditory reading-comprehension (matching printed words to dictated words) and oral reading (naming printed words).

The continuous judgmental color-naming technique was used to assess the elemental nature of names descriptive of dark colors. Subjects were instructed to describe the color of a 0.54 deg, 2.5 log td test field of either 450, 530, 580 or 660 nm, that was surrounded by an achromatic annulus of 3.8 deg outer diameter. The annulus was varied in retinal illuminance from 1.5 to 3.7 log td. Test field and annulus were flashed simultaneously for 1 sec to the fovea of one eye. Results from 3 subjects indicated that the names blue, green, red and black were necessary and sufficient for describing the 450, 530 and 660 nm test fields. The 580 nm test field required the color name brown, in addition to the names yellow and black, to describe it when intermediate surround intensities were used. Additional results suggested the possible elemental nature of the color name brown.

A person can attend to a message in one ear while seemingly ignoring a simultaneously presented verbal message in the other ear. There is considerable controversy over the extent to which the unattended message is actually processed. This issue was investigated by presenting dichotic messages to which the listeners responded by buttonpressing (not shadowing) to color words occurring in the primary ear message while attempting to detect a target word in either the primary ear or secondary ear message. Less than 40% of the target words were detected in the secondary ear message, whereas for the primary ear message (and also for either ear in a control experiment), target detection was approximately 80%. Furthermore, there was a significant negative correlation between buttonpressing performance and secondary ear target-detection performance. The results were interpreted as being inconsistent with automatic processing theories of attention.

The location of the foci of green and blue in the perceptual color solid indicates that there is space for a derived color term between these two hues. Diachronic and synchronic linguistic studies on color term lexica explain that a term for turquoise is likely to develop into a derived basic color term (in the Kay and McDaniel definition), at present in languages of industrialized countries. In addition to the hypothesis of Zimmer (1982) that ‘turkis’ (in German) is the result of universal production system for color terms, cultural, social, and psychological factors influence the evolution of new basic color terms.

Berlin and Kay (ibid.) and Kay and McDaniel (1978) for discussions concerning the naming of the "universal inventory of eleven color categories," including "primary," "derived," and "composite" types. We need to carefully define "encoding" and "basic color term." Normally in the literature the process of basic color term addition to a language is defined vaguely as the breakdown of composite categories into their component primaries and the subsequent naming of derived categories. Here, "to encode" means "to assign a basic color term to a noncomposite category, such that a one-to-one correspondence exists between category and name." The definition is useful in that it is explicit and conceptually equivalent to the "breakdown" definition; to break down a composite implies a simultaneous naming of its primaries. In addition, the definition allows the possibility of recognizing derived color categories in basic color

Developmental studies suggest that by second grade, children demonstrate the process of automatic extraction of meaning from printed words. In previous studies response time was used to test this information-processing mechanism. It is argued that response time is an inappropriate measure to study the process developmentally. The present research therefore employed a Stroop-type recall test. Two hundred and forty subjects, representing second, third, and fourth graders, and college students, were tested in three experimental conditions. The task was to recall the items on lists of six colored Xs, or six color words, or six color words printed in incongruent colors. In all age groups, color words were recalled better than printed colors. These results, obtained with a more appropriate methodology, confirm that after one year of training and practice with reading material, children automatically extract the meaning from a single printed word. Contrary to previous findings, younger children did not demonstra...

Words are generally related in meaning and can often be organized into semantic domains. One way children may learn that two words belong to the same semantic domain is to hear the words used contrastively. This work examines the circumstances in which hearing a new word contrasted with familiar words from the same semantic domain may help young children induce the new word meaning. Some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel color name or material name and heard it contrasted with familiar words; some heard the novel word used for referring to an object but received no explicit contrastive information; and some did not hear the novel word used at all prior to testing. All children were then given a variety of tests to determine what they had learned about the novel word. The results were that explicit linguistic contrast helped only in some situations. Children seemed to prefer material to color in hypothesizing about a new word meaning. Linguistic contrast helped children when it was consistent with this preference, but not when it was inconsistent. Thus, it helped children map a material name, but not a color name, onto the appropriate semantic domain.

Three experiments examined subjects’ ability to strategically influence interference from conflicting color words while naming colors. Contingencies introduced between words and colors allowed subjects to predict the value of the reported (color) dimension when given the value of the unreported (word) dimension and thereby to speed processing. Strategies to exploit these contingencies were adopted when only two colors were used and buttonpress responses (Experiment 1) and vocal responses (Experiment 2) were required. When four colors were used (Experiment 3), there was no evidence of the strategy. Implications for the interpretation of existing Stroop data are discussed.

Some recent studies have demonstrated that the processing of color is favored by the nondominant hemisphere in English-speaking subjects. Single Chinese logographs in Japanese- as well as Chinese-speaking subjects are similarly favored. In the present study, it was hypothesized that more Stroop interference would occur in the nondominant hemisphere because the two processes involved in the Stroop effect (i.e., reading logographs and naming colors) are possibly localized in that hemisphere in Chinese-speaking subjects. Eighteen right-handed Chinese-English bilinguals were used as subjects. There were three conditions in each visual field: Interference, reading, and naming. Each slide was presented for 150 msec preceded by a fixation dot. Subjects were asked to verbally report as fast and as accurately as possible either the color words or the color names, depending upon the condition. Reaction times and error rates were analyzed. As expected, more Stroop interference was obtained when color words were presented in the left visual field. This result is in direct contrast with that of Y-C. Tsao, T. Feustel, and C. Soseos 1979, Brain and Language , 8, 367–371. In that study, more Stroop interference was obtained when the materials were presented in the right visual field in English-speaking subjects.

The relative salience of color terms in folk tales from forty cultures is examined in this study. The authors test the hypothesis that a significant, positive association exists between the relative salience of color categories in folk tales and the evolutionary sequence proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969) to account for cross-cultural differences in color lexicons. The results support the hypothesis. While minor intercultural variations in basic color term salience are found, there is a strong, and possibly universal, tendency for the salience of color terms to correspond to the postulated evolutionary sequence. Additionally, it appears that the evolutionary order is related to the number of different classes of objects to which color terms are applied. We argue that the evolution of basic color lexicons is promoted by an increase in cultural complexity generally and, more specifically, by an increase in the diversity of material culture and technological development.