[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/en\/article\/modal\/6495\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EHow we perceive colour depends on our culture and language \u2013 Prof. Anna Franklin\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EHow many colours are there? \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Colour is a spectrum and research has shown that we are capable of seeing millions of them: if you show people two very close shades of green they can tell that they are not the same. But rather than name all of these as distinct colours, we tend to categorise them into groups like blue, green and so on.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EIs there a fixed number of colour groups?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Different languages break up colour in different ways. For example, some languages have only four basic words for colour whereas others have 11 or 12. One of the big questions in the field has been whether the way in which cultures carve up the colour spectrum is completely arbitrary.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EYou\u2019re investigating the link between language and colour as part of your CATEGORIES project, funded by the EU\u0027s European Research Council. Does categorisation develop as we learn language or is it innate?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018One part of our project aims to look at what age we begin to categorise colour: when do we turn millions of colours into families or groups. We have shown that four-month-old infants know that two greens are the same kind of colour rather than belonging to separate categories.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EHow do you quiz infants about colour?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We give them habituation tasks: we show the infant a shade of green and get them used to it. Then we show them a new colour \u2013 if the new colour is blue, they respond to it as though it is something novel. If it is another shade of green, we can see they are already used to it because they are not as excited by it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018In terms of how different the colours are, the new green and the new blue could be the same distance from the original green but the infant can tell whether the new colour belongs to the same category as the original. So it\u2019s not that they are more different from the original, it\u2019s that they are categorically different.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018What we want to know now is how many colour categories infants start out with and how this aligns with language. Do infants carve up colour in the same way as languages do it?\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat do you expect to find?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Our theory is that there are natural fault lines that infants have; that we have a basic template for categorising colour and then you personalise that depending on what distinctions are important in your culture.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EHow else might language influence colour perception? \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Another element of our work is looking at the relationship between naming colours and colour perception. For example, Russian has two words for blue \u2013 it distinguishes the darker and lighter blues into separate categories. Russian speakers, because of this fundamental distinction, are more sensitive to colours in that region of the spectrum. We can test this by measuring the electrical activity of the brain from the scalp in Russian speakers compared to others when they are asked to differentiate between two shades of blue.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018What we found is that there are differences but they come relatively late \u2013 a couple of hundred milliseconds after seeing the colours. This suggests that two people with different colour lexicons see the colours the same way but they think about colour differently: the difference is cognitive rather than visual. Language hasn\u2019t fundamentally altered how colours are seen, but it has changed what we do with the information.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat brain regions are involved in naming colours?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We\u2019ve identified a region of the brain responsible for categories of colour. It\u2019s called the middle frontal gyrus. For example, if you are just passively viewing colours and it changes from green to blue, the middle frontal gyrus\u0026nbsp;is sensitive to this.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat about people who are colour blind?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Some people with colour vision deficiency see colours differently because they are lacking a certain type of cone \u2013 colour-sensitive cells \u2013 at the back of the retina. For normal colour vision you need three types of cones which respond to long, medium and short wavelengths.\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003E\u2018Two people with different colour lexicons see the colours the same way but they think about colour differently.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EProf. Anna Franklin, University of Sussex, UK\u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018If you are missing one type of cone it can affect your perception but also influences whether you like certain colours. We all like colours we can name quickly, so the way in which we categorise colour affects our aesthetic experience of colour. If it\u2019s a struggle to identify and name a colour we tend not to like it and this is an issue for people with colour vision deficiencies.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EA photo of a dress went viral last year because people disagreed about what colour it was. Why did it cause such confusion and excitement? \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018This is not an area where I am working, but the dress has been the subject of much debate and psychological research. Some have suggested that the dress phenomenon may relate to what\u2019s called colour constancy. We are all capable of keeping the perception of colour constant in our minds even if the light changes. For example, a yellow banana under blue light still looks yellow to us because our brains compensate for the blue light.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We like colours to be stable as it makes the world more predictable. One argument made by some is that the illumination of the dress makes for an ambiguous and unstable colour.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We have conducted a study looking at colour constancy in the context of how children learn. If you can keep a colour constant and compensate for lighting, it is actually easier to learn the word for that colour.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EHow could all of this be applied? \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We are just about to start a new project which will design a test that diagnoses colour vision deficiency in young toddlers. At the moment most tests are designed for children older than four years of age, but a lot of development has already taken place by that age \u2013 and a great deal of it is linked to colours. Just think how important colour is in nursery education \u2013 for coding things, grouping things \u2013 a lot of educational material is heavily reliant on colour.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018These materials can be more difficult for people with colour vision deficiencies to access, potentially putting them at a disadvantage. Some studies suggest that children with colour deficiencies are mistakenly presumed to have a learning disability because they cannot understand what they are being shown.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We hope that by diagnosing colour vision deficiencies early we could level the playing field for those children.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/textarea\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv id=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 class=\u0022ecl-help-block description\u0022\u003E\n Please copy the above code and embed it onto your website to republish.\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cinput autocomplete=\u0022off\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022form-btnf8lx6nbfodldl3l0t04fdx6w9faiiv6snb00f7by\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_build_id\u0022 value=\u0022form-btNf8lX6NbFoDldl3l0T04fDx6W9FaIIv6Snb00f7BY\u0022 \/\u003E\n\u003Cinput data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_id\u0022 value=\u0022modal_form_example_modal_form\u0022 \/\u003E\n\u003C\/form\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E","dialogOptions":{"width":"800","modal":true,"title":"Republish this content"}}]