Emotional Context and Color Perception and Recognition by 12- and 16-years-old Children

Will the emotional context in which a painting is placed impact how well adolescents remember the colors in it? Will there be differences in color perception and recognition based on age and gender? Specific materials had to be designed to answer this question: (a) an abstract, themeless painting composed of twelve colors, each covering the same area with the same number of pixels, and (b) four texts with different emotional connotations (fear, anger, happiness, and sadness) describing the lives of fictitious painters. After being pretested, the material was proposed to 142 seventh-grade students and 71 tenth-grade students. Each subject studied a painting and heard one of the four texts. Next, the painting was taken away; after this, the subjects ordered the twelve colors based on how much area they thought each one covered the painting. It was hypothesized that the subjects would give greater importance to specific colors depending on the emotional context induced by the associated text. The results confirmed this hypothesis, although the tenth graders were less affected by the emotional context than the seventh graders. There was no statistically significant effect of gender in either population.

The Effects of Ozone on Visual Attraction Traits of Erodium paularense (Geraniaceae) Flowers: Modelled Perception by Insect Pollinators

Ozone (O3) effects on the visual attraction traits (color, perception and area) of petals are described for Erodium paularense, an endangered plant species. Plants were exposed to three O3 treatments: charcoal-filtered air (CFA), ambient (NFA) and ambient + 40 nL L−1 O3 (FU+) in open-top chambers. Changes in color were measured by spectral reflectance, from which the anthocyanin reflectance index (ARI) was calculated. Petal spectral reflectance was mapped onto color spaces of bees, flies and butterflies for studying color changes as perceived by different pollinator guilds. Ozone-induced increases in petal reflectance and a rise in ARI under NFA were observed. Ambient O3 levels also induced a partial change in the color perception of flies, with the number of petals seen as blue increasing to 53% compared to only 24% in CFA. Butterflies also showed the ability to partially perceive petal color changes, differentiating some CFA petals from NFA and FU+ petals through changes in the excitation of the UV photoreceptor. Importantly, O3 reduced petal area by 19.8 and 25% in NFA and FU+ relative to CFA, respectively. In sensitive species O3 may affect visual attraction traits important for pollination, and spectral reflectance is proposed as a novel method for studying O3 effects on flower color.

Bi-level perception and color modes. Contrast ratio and complementarity of colors

For the “Self”, color is a color text, a structure consisting of two elements: internal context (content: tone, saturation, brightness) and external context (conditions under which color actualizes in a situation: lightness, proximity, etc.). Perception of the color is when the content overlays the conditions. The modes of color are revealed depending on the ratio of indicated contexts. There are three color modes: visible, invisible, and colorless. The goal of this article is to describe the color modes, and their correlation with contrast and complementarity of colors, what entails bi-level perception of color. The article employs situational and phenomenological approaches. Visible color for the “Self” occurs when the internal context completely overlays the external context. Invisible color occurs in the presence of internal context and absence of one or more external factors: no tone, no contrast with background, etc. “Colorless” mode occurs when the internal context is not fully set in the situation of presence of the external context: no tone, saturation, or brightness. Color in the “colorless” mode is achromatic. The compatibility of separate colors within the color text leads to the phenomena of complementarity and contrast ratio, which are interrelated with the color modes. There are two levels of color perception: 1) fundamental, i.e. is the perception of achromatic color with gradations from sharply white to pure black; gray color with varying degrees of brightness is present in chromatic colors (as the “base”); 2) perception of the chromatic colors, founded on the colorless “base”. Such bi-level perception of color is substantiated by the fact that the consciousness seeks harmony and balance, i.e. minimization of perception of the visual.

Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception

Many languages express ‘blue’ and ‘green’ under an umbrella term ‘grue’. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.

Lexical Color Categories

Color is a continuous variable, and humans can distinguish more than a million colors, yet world color lexicons contain no more than a dozen basic color terms. It has been understood for 160 years that the number of color terms in a lexicon varies greatly across languages, yet the lexical color categories defined by these terms are similar worldwide. Starting with the seminal study by Berlin and Kay, this review considers how and why this is so. Evidence from psychological, linguistic, and computational studies has advanced our understanding of how color categories came into being, how they contribute to our shared understanding of color, and how the resultant categories influence color perception and cognition. A key insight from the last 50 years of research is how human perception and the need for communication within a society worked together to create color lexicons that are somewhat diverse, yet show striking regularities worldwide.

Color measurement

Our color perception is characterized by subjective influences. Color measurement enables an objective description of colors. In this process, white light is sent onto a color sample and the reflected rays are measured as a percentage compared to a white standard. The physiological standard color values are first calculated from the physical measured values by standardized conversions. From these, the L*a*b* values can be determined as they are given by the CIE (Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage). While one geometry is sufficient for color pigments to describe them, several defined geometries are required for aluminum and interference pigments. These geometries (illumination and observation angles) are specified for the different measuring instruments.