Testing Color Vision in Children

It is important to screen for acquired or hereditary color vision defects as early as possible. Color vision is a critical part of the early learning experience, and children who have color deficiencies may have difficulties compared to their peers if there is color-based schoolwork. It becomes important for career interests/goals for older children as some jobs may require normal color vision. Hereditary red-green deficiencies are X-linked and therefore affect approximately 8% of males and less than 1% of females. Acquired color vision defects and blue-yellow defects are rare in the pediatric population; therefore, these conditions will be discussed minimally in this chapter. Infants are able to discern color by 2-3 months of age, but accurate color naming may not develop until 4-6 years of age. Screening tests are sensitive, fast, and easy to administer. If a deficiency is suspected through screening, further testing must be evaluated in order to determine the type and severity of the color vision defect. Color vision is typically tested starting at age 3 years and up.

Relationship Between Cognitive Functions and Online Game Addiction

The present study was aimed to examine the cognitive functions among adolescents with online game addiction behaviour. For the present study 60 adolescents who play online games were been studied living in Delhi-Ncr region following cross-sectional research design. The instruments used encompassed of a demographic data sheet, Game addiction scale, Stroop color word test, Trail making test, Eysenck’s series of digit span test and n-beck test. The obtained data was been analysed by using SPSS to see the relationship between cognitive functions and game addiction with Pearson-r, frequency distribution and correlation. The findings indicated that gamers who remained preoccupied with playing had difficulty in color naming and indicates withdrawal feature that interfere in their retrieval. And also indicates that online gamers who experienced conflict due to online gaming had significantly deficit in attention and concentration.

The evolution of color naming reflects pressure for efficiency: Evidence from the recent past

It has been proposed that semantic systems evolve under pressure for efficiency. This hypothesis has so far been supported largely indirectly, by synchronic cross-language comparison, rather than directly by diachronic data. Here, we directly test this hypothesis in the domain of color naming, by analyzing recent diachronic data from Nafaanra, a language of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, and comparing it with quantitative predictions derived from the mathematical theory of efficient data compression. We show that color naming in Nafaanra has changed over the past four decades while remaining near-optimally efficient, and that this outcome would be unlikely under a random drift process that maintains structured color categories without pressure for efficiency. To our knowledge, this finding provides the first direct evidence that color naming evolves under pressure for efficiency, supporting the hypothesis that efficiency shapes the evolution of the lexicon.

Intergenerational differences in Russian color naming in the globalized era: linguistic analysis

The present study is an apparent-time analysis of color terms in Russian native speakers (N = 1927), whose age varied between 16 and 98 years. Stratified sampling was employed with the following age groups: 16–19, 20–29, and so on, with the oldest group of 70 years and over. Color names were elicited in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment (http://colournaming.com). Participants labeled color samples (N = 606) using an unconstrained color-naming method. Color vocabulary of each age group was estimated using multiple linguistic measures: diversity index; frequency of occurrences of 12 Russian basic color terms (BCTs) and of most frequent non-BCTs; color-naming pattern. Our findings show intergenerational differences in Russian color-term vocabulary, color-naming patterns, and object referents. The CT diversity (measured by the Margalef index) progressively increments with speakers’ juniority; the lexical refinement is manifested by the increasing variety of BCT modifiers and growing use of non-BCTs, both traditional and novel. Furthermore, the most frequent Russian non-BCTs sirenevyj “lilac”, salatovyj “lettuce‐colored”, and birûzovyj “turquoise” appear to be the emerging BCTs. The greatest diversity and richness of CT inventory is observed in Russian speakers aged 20–59 years, i.e., those who constitute the active workforce and are enthusiastic consumers. In comparison, speakers of 60 and over manifest less diverse color inventory and greater prevalence of (modified) BCTs. The two youngest groups (16–29 years) are linguistic innovators: their color vocabulary includes abundant recent loanwords, predominantly from English and, not infrequently, CTs as nouns rather than adjectives. Moreover, Generation Z (16–19 years) tend to offer highly specific or idiosyncratic color descriptors that serve expressive rather than informative function. The apprehended dynamics of color naming in apparent time reflects intergenerational differences as such, but even more so dramatic changes of sociocultural reality in the post-Soviet era, whereby Russian speakers, in particular under 60 years, were/are greatly impacted by globalization of trade: new market product arrivals resulted in adoption of novel and elaboration of traditional CTs for efficient communication about perceived color

What we talk about when we talk about colors

Names for colors vary widely across languages, but color categories are remarkably consistent. Shared mechanisms of color perception help explain consistent partitions of visible light into discrete color vocabularies. But the mappings from colors to words are not identical across languages, which may reflect communicative needs—how often speakers must refer to objects of different color. Here we quantify the communicative needs of colors in 130 different languages by developing an inference algorithm for this problem. We find that communicative needs are not uniform: Some regions of color space exhibit 30-fold greater demand for communication than other regions. The regions of greatest demand correlate with the colors of salient objects, including ripe fruits in primate diets. Our analysis also reveals a hidden diversity in the communicative needs of colors across different languages, which is partly explained by differences in geographic location and the local biogeography of linguistic communities. Accounting for language-specific, nonuniform communicative needs improves predictions for how a language maps colors to words, and how these mappings vary across languages. Our account closes an important gap in the compression theory of color naming, while opening directions to study cross-cultural variation in the need to communicate different colors and its impact on the cultural evolution of color categories.

The Semantic Structure of Color Terms in Arabic: A Cognitive Approach

The acquisition of the ability of perceiving and naming colors through language is an important topic in which languages vary and differ. The construction of color concepts and naming them are directly influenced by the culture and environment of each society. This can be noted by observing two aspects: Cognitive Semantics and its effect on the collective mind. This study focuses on the cognitive foundations of color terms in Arabic, and the semantic relation between the color concepts and terms in selected examples from both old and new usage of these color terms in Arabic. The study aims to cover the most dominant semantic components for color terms in the Arabic language, using the cognitive linguistic approach and the descriptive analytics method to determine the structure of cognitive perception of color terms in a language. Furthermore, the study stands on two pillars; the first reveals the way the conceptualization pattern of color terms occurs in Arab mindset displayed through selected examples of theoretical data on cognitive semantics, whereas the second addresses the semantic principle of color classification in Arabic. Finally, the conclusion, confirming the results about the notion that color naming in Arabic is based on the visual images associated with the colors in Arab environment, related to night and day. Hence, the color term becomes connected in the Arab mindset with the visual image, and under each color are colors similar to it in hue.

Influence of vocational education on color vocabulary and color naming patterns

Introduction. The professional education received and the professional activity carried out have a tangible impact on many spheres of human life. A professional environment influences a person’s consciousness, changes his/her conceptual thinking and lexical content of everyday communication. The purpose of the research is to test whether growing color competence affects the size, variability, and quality of the color vocabulary of native Russian speakers. Materials and methods. The data were collected in an online experiment involving 1737 native Russian speakers with different professional backgrounds and levels of color competence: 1103 participants were not professionally involved with color (hereafter referred to as non-professionals); 509 were students, in the process of professionally mastering the theoretical foundations of color science and colorism, and had basic color competence (hereafter referred to as novice professionals); 125 participants were practicing colorists and color consultants, designers and architects (hereafter referred to as experienced professionals). Results. The research showed that the growth of professional experience and coloristic competence noticeably affects the color vocabulary and color naming patterns. Compared to non-professionals, novice and experienced professionals use more complex color naming patterns and a greater variety of chromatic and achromatic modifiers (the Shannon diversity index increases from 6.55 to 7.52 and 7.12 respectively), but fewer basic color names (they account for 47% of non-professional, 43% of novice and 38% of experienced professionals’ vocabulary). The influence of professional education and professional culture is most pronounced in the choice of referent objects for describing connotations. 132 of the 320 referent objects proposed by non-professionals, and 113 of the 301 objects proposed by professionals, were “endemic” to each of these groups and were not used by representatives of other groups. Non-professionals most often described hues using naturally occurring substances, plants, flowers, artifacts, and body products as prototypes. Color specialists chose as referents dyes, pigments, paint brands, and exotic terms that fill modern advertising. Conclusions. The results confirm the hypothesis that, in addition to the universal perceptual factors that control color categorization, color-related cognitive processes are also influenced by social and cultural factors. The revealed professional differences of color vocabulary and color naming patterns can be used in the practical implementation of the process of formation of linguodidactic design of professional personality of a wide range of professionals, whose activities are directly or indirectly related to the choice of color and color design.

Lexical features of color naming in various linguocultures

This paper focuses on studying the lexical features of color designations in English and Russian, as color vocabulary has differences in word formation, associations, the richness of meanings, and stylistic features. The methodological basis of the study comprises works of such domestic and foreign researchers as E. V. Krapivnik, V. G. Kulpina, S. G. Shafikov, G. V. Struchalina, B. Berlin, and others. The Russian and English language students will understand better the linguistic and cultural specifics of color designations in fiction texts. The outcomes of this work will help in preparing academic courses in English and Russian Stylistics, Lexicology, and Translation Studies. This work will help students and all those who study Russian and Russian languages better understand the linguistic and cultural specifics of color meanings in texts of artistic orientation. The work results will help to prepare courses on the stylistics of the English and Russian languages, Lexicology, and Translation Studies.

Neural Dynamics of Conflict Control in Working Memory

Attention and working memory (WM) have classically been considered as two separate cognitive functions, but more recent theories have conceptualized them as operating on shared representations and being distinguished primarily by whether attention is directed internally (WM) or externally (attention, traditionally defined). Supporting this idea, a recent behavioral study documented a “WM Stroop effect,” showing that maintaining a color word in WM impacts perceptual color-naming performance to the same degree as presenting the color word externally in the classic Stroop task. Here, we employed ERPs to examine the neural processes underlying this WM Stroop task compared to those in the classic Stroop and in a WM-control task. Based on the assumption that holding a color word in WM would (pre-)activate the same color representation as by externally presenting that color word, we hypothesized that the neural cascade of conflict–control processes would occur more rapidly in the WM Stroop than in the classic Stroop task. Our behavioral results replicated equivalent interference behavioral effects for the WM and classic Stroop tasks. Importantly, however, the ERP signatures of conflict detection and resolution displayed substantially shorter latencies in the WM Stroop task. Moreover, delay-period conflict in the WM Stroop task, but not in the WM control task, impacted the ERP and performance measures for the WM probe stimuli. Together, these findings provide new insights into how the brain processes conflict between internal representations and external stimuli, and they support the view of shared representations between internally held WM content and attentional processing of external stimuli.