Reporting Color Experience in Grapheme-Color Synesthesia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmina Jraissati
Keyword(s):  
Color Appearance ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Basic Color ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter examines the method for reporting color in grapheme-color synesthesia and its consequences. The Berlin and Kay basic color categories typology is sometimes used, but one should wonder whether such a simplification is justified, and whether it might not have important theoretical implications for our understanding of synesthesia. In this chapter, such implications are uncovered. A discussion opposing Simner and colleagues to Beeli and colleagues regarding the linguistic vs/color appearance bias of grapheme-color associations is taken as an illustration. Essentially, it is argued that the Berlin and Kay typology is misused, leading to dangerous tensions, and that the assumed relation between color appearance, categories, and terms is not clear. In conclusion, the chapter suggests how research in color categorization can offer alternative frameworks to understand grapheme-color synesthesia, and notes that work in synesthesia can also shed light on color categorization.

Unique Hue Stimulus Choice: A Constraint on Hue Category Formation

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 387-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Kuehni
Keyword(s):  
Derived Categories ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Stimulus Choice ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Category Formation ◽  
Basic Color ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
Unique Hues

AbstractBerlin & Kay hue-related basic color categories are compared with the ISCC-NBS system of object color categorization. Though independently derived, categories of the former form a small subset of the latter. A conjecture is proposed that explains the absence of yellow-green and blue-green basic hue categories and the potential for a violet category as the result of constraints on primitive hue category formation due to considerable variation in stimuli selected by color-normal observers as representing for them unique hues.

Neurophenomenological constraints and pushing back the subjectivity barrier

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 961-963
Author(s):  
Bruce MacLennan
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Experience ◽  
Relational Structure ◽  
Subjective Quality ◽  
Accurate Model ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Basic Color

In the first part of this commentary I argue that a neurophenomenological analysis of color reveals additional asymmetries that preclude undetectable color transformations, without appealing to weak arguments based on Basic Color Categories (BCCs); that is, I suggest additional factors that must be included in “an empirically accurate model of color experience,” and which break the remaining asymmetries. In the second part I discuss the “isomorphism constraint” and the extent to which we may predict the subjective quality of experience from its neurological correlates. Protophenomena are discussed as a way of capturing in a relational structure all of qualitative experience except for the bare fact of subjectivity.

Culture and Cognition: What is Universal about the Representation of Color Experience?

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 293-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Jameson
Keyword(s):  
Color Naming ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Interpoint Distance ◽  
Color Processing ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Distance Model ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary

AbstractExisting research in color naming and categorization primarily reflects two opposing views: A Cultural Relativist view that posits color perception is greatly shaped by culturally specific language associations and perceptual learning, and a Universalist view that emphasizes panhuman shared color processing as the basis for color naming similarities within and across cultures. Recent empirical evidence finds color processing differs both within and across cultures. This divergent color processing raises new questions about the sources of previously observed cultural coherence and cross-cultural universality. The present article evaluates the relevance of individual variation on the mainstream model of color naming. It also presents an alternate view that specifies how color naming and categorization is shaped by both panhuman cognitive universals and socio-cultural evolutionary processes. This alternative view, expressed, in part, using an Interpoint Distance Model of color categorization, is compatible with new empirical results showing divergent color processing within and across cultures. It suggests that universalities in color naming and categorization may naturally arise across cultures because color language and color categories primarily reflect culturally modal linguistic mappings, and categories are shaped by universal cognitive constructs and culturally salient features of color. Thus, a shared cultural representation of color based on widely shared cognitive dimensions may be the proper foundation for universalities of color naming and categorization. Across cultures this form of representation may result from convergent responses to similar pressures on color lexicon evolution.

is color perception really categorical?

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-505
Author(s):  
mohan matthen
Keyword(s):  
Color Perception ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
Evolutionary Product

are color categories the evolutionary product of their usefulness in communication, or is this an accidental benefit they give us? it is argued here that embodiment constraints on color categorization suggest that communication is an add-on at best. thus, the steels & belpaeme (s&b) model may be important in explaining coordination, but only at the margin. furthermore, the concentration on discrimination is questionable: coclassification is at least as important.

Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 923-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Color Space ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Color Similarity ◽  
Brain Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Methods ◽  
Color Composition

The relations among consciousness, brain, behavior, and scientific explanation are explored in the domain of color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke's “inverted spectrum argument” about the undetectability of color transformations. A symmetry analysis of color space shows that the literal interpretation of this argument – reversing the experience of a rainbow – would not work. Three other color-to-color transformations might work, however, depending on the relevance of certain color categories. The approach is then generalized to examine behavioral detection of arbitrary differences in color experiences, leading to the formulation of a principled distinction, called the “isomorphism constraint,” between what can and cannot be determined about the nature of color experience by objective behavioral means. Finally, the prospects for achieving a biologically based explanation of color experience below the level of isomorphism are considered in light of the limitations of behavioral methods. Within-subject designs using biological interventions hold the greatest promise for scientific progress on consciousness, but objective knowledge of another person's experience appears impossible. The implications of these arguments for functionalism are discussed.

intimations of optimality: extensions of simulation testing of color-language hypotheses

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
david bimler
Keyword(s):  
Language Community ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Simulation Testing

by emphasizing that color categories are the collective achievement of a language community, the methodology of steels & belpaeme (s&b) suggests a number of corollaries. it focuses attention on whether a system of categories is optimized to match color experience. if a hypothesis can be operationalized about the nature of the optimality – about how color language becomes standardized – it becomes testable.

scholarly journals The color of night: Surface color categorization by color defective observers under dim illuminations

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL POKORNY ◽  
MARGARET LUTZE ◽  
DINGCAI CAO ◽  
ANDREW J. ZELE
Keyword(s):  
Color Vision ◽  
Surface Color ◽  
Low Light ◽  
Light Levels ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Basic Color ◽  
Color Vision Deficiencies ◽  
Orange Color ◽  
Color Scales

People with normal trichromatic color vision experience variegated hue percepts under dim illuminations where only rod photoreceptors mediate vision. Here, hue perceptions were determined for persons with congenital color vision deficiencies over a wide range of light levels, including very low light levels where rods alone mediate vision. Deuteranomalous trichromats, deuteranopes and protanopes served as observers. The appearances of 24 paper color samples from the OSA Uniform Color Scales were gauged under successively dimmer illuminations from 10 to 0.0003 Lux (1.0 to −3.5 log Lux). Triads of samples were chosen representing each of eight basic color categories; “red,” “pink,” “orange,” “yellow,” “green,” “blue,” “purple,” and “gray.” Samples within each triad varied in lightness. Observers sorted samples into groups that they could categorize with specific color names. Above −0.5 log Lux, the dichromatic and anomalous trichromatic observers sorted the samples into the original representative color groups, with some exceptions. At light levels where rods alone mediate vision, the color names assigned by the deuteranomalous trichromats were similar to the color names used by color normals; higher scotopic reflectance samples were classified as blue-green-grey and lower reflectance samples as red-orange. Color names reported by the dichromats at the dimmest light levels had extensive overlap in their sample scotopic lightness distributions. Dichromats did not assign scotopic color names based on the sample scotopic lightness, as did deuteranomalous trichromats and colour-normals. We reasoned that the reduction in color gamut that a dichromat experiences at photopic light levels leads to a limited association of rod color perception with objects differing in scotopic reflectance.

scholarly journals Biological origins of color categorization

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (21) ◽  
pp. 5545-5550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice E. Skelton ◽  
Gemma Catchpole ◽  
Joshua T. Abbott ◽  
Jenny M. Bosten ◽  
Anna Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
Biological Origin ◽  
Color Representation ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
The Relationship

The biological basis of the commonality in color lexicons across languages has been hotly debated for decades. Prior evidence that infants categorize color could provide support for the hypothesis that color categorization systems are not purely constructed by communication and culture. Here, we investigate the relationship between infants’ categorization of color and the commonality across color lexicons, and the potential biological origin of infant color categories. We systematically mapped infants’ categorical recognition memory for hue onto a stimulus array used previously to document the color lexicons of 110 nonindustrialized languages. Following familiarization to a given hue, infants’ response to a novel hue indicated that their recognition memory parses the hue continuum into red, yellow, green, blue, and purple categories. Infants’ categorical distinctions aligned with common distinctions in color lexicons and are organized around hues that are commonly central to lexical categories across languages. The boundaries between infants’ categorical distinctions also aligned, relative to the adaptation point, with the cardinal axes that describe the early stages of color representation in retinogeniculate pathways, indicating that infant color categorization may be partly organized by biological mechanisms of color vision. The findings suggest that color categorization in language and thought is partially biologically constrained and have implications for broader debate on how biology, culture, and communication interact in human cognition.

scholarly journals Neural Hierarchy of Color Categorization: From Prototype Encoding to Boundary Encoding

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengdan Sun ◽  
Luming Hu ◽  
Xiaoyang Xin ◽  
Xuemin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Category Boundary ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Color Categorization ◽  
Category Variability ◽  
Candidate Loci ◽  
The Brain

A long-standing debate exists on how our brain assigns the fine-grained perceptual representation of color into discrete color categories. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have identified several regions as the candidate loci of color categorization, including the visual cortex, language-related areas, and non-language-related frontal regions, but the evidence is mixed. Distinct from most studies that emphasized the representational differences between color categories, the current study focused on the variability among members within a category (e.g., category prototypes and boundaries) to reveal category encoding in the brain. We compared and modeled brain activities evoked by color stimuli with varying distances from the category boundary in an active categorization task. The frontal areas, including the inferior and middle frontal gyri, medial superior frontal cortices, and insular cortices, showed larger responses for colors near the category boundary than those far from the boundary. In addition, the visual cortex encodes both within-category variability and cross-category differences. The left V1 in the calcarine showed greater responses to colors at the category center than to those far from the boundary, and the bilateral V4 showed enhanced responses for colors at the category center as well as colors around the boundary. The additional representational similarity analyses (RSA) revealed that the bilateral insulae and V4a carried information about cross-category differences, as cross-category colors exhibited larger dissimilarities in brain patterns than within-category colors. Our study suggested a hierarchically organized network in the human brain during active color categorization, with frontal (both lateral and medial) areas supporting domain-general decisional processes and the visual cortex encoding category structure and differences, likely due to top-down modulation.

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