Color Tone Perception and Naming: Development inAcquisition of Color Modifiers

Dishna R. WanasingheDepartment of Computer Systems

University of Aizu, Japand8061102@u-aizu.ac.jp

Charith N.W. GiragamaDepartment of Computer Systems

University of Aizu, Japand8041101@u-aizu.ac.jp

Nadia Bianchi-BerthouzeDepartment of Computer Systems

University of Aizu, Japannadia@u-aizu.ac.jp

Abstract— Color is one of the most obvious attributes withwhich children usually start to classify objects they see. Thepurpose of this study was to investigate the development ofchildren’s ability to discriminate and name colors that variedin saturation and intensity (value) for a given hue (i.e., colortones). Perceptual and naming behaviors were assessed in 221children, aged between 8 and 24, grouped in three categories,elementary, junior high school and university students. Colortone perception was observed through odd–one–out task andnaming responses were obtained in terms of modifiers: vivid,strong, dark, bright, dull, and pale. Results revealed that thediscrimination of subtle variations of color tones in two youngerage groups was similar to that of the university students. Inaddition, it was found that elementary school children reliablystart interpreting their experience of such variations with justthree modifier terms: bright, strong, and dark. The knowledgeof color modifier terms varied with age. When the namingtask was constrained, a developmental order in the acquisitionof such terms was observed. Salient dimensions underlyingthe judgments of color modifier terms were identified. Theimportance of each dimension varied with age. At the levelof elementary, the semantic classification of color tones wasstrongly based only on intensity. At the junior high school level,it was found that saturation emerged as an important dimensionin assigning modifiers.

Index Terms— Child Development, Color Tone Naming, ColorTone Perception, Triadic–Comparison

I. INTRODUCTION

Research on color psychology has impressively grownover the last decade. A special attention has been paid tounderstand how infants and adults perceive and interpret basiccolors. Nevertheless, remarkably very few studies have beencarried out on age groups from childhood to adolescence.Moreover, a considerable number of studies were only onbasic colors, leaving the monochromatic colors (different tintsand shades of a single hue) almost unexplored even thoughthey are equally capable of triggering different perceptionson humans. Therefore, the present study uniquely attemptsto investigate the perception and the interpretation of colorsthat vary only on two dimensions, i.e., saturation and intensity(value), while keeping the hue constant. Furthermore, thestudy explores how age affects perception and interpretationsin terms of modifiers, the words use as adjective to modify

a hue term.Color is highly important and perceptually salient attribute

and, according to Pitchford and Mullen [7], it is one ofthe perceptual attributes with which children initially startdiscriminating between things. Psychological evidence sug-gests that the ability to perceive and discriminate colorsis established in infancy. In fact, infants can distinguishcolor differences within the first few weeks of life [10],[15]. Despite this skill, it has been observed that, even afterchildren have reached the age at which they can name allordinary things, they are still incapable of giving the rightnames to colors [4]. Literature shows that reliable colornaming skills appear surprisingly late in age, at around 4−7years [3], [6].

Consequently, young children might experience more dif-ficulty in providing accurate modifier terms when describingsubtle variations of saturation and intensity (value) in asingle hue. Thus, the aim of this study was to empiricallyinvestigate whether this difficulty exists at a perceptuallyand/or semantically level.

Pioneering researchers, Berlin and Kay [1], proposed ahierarchy that reflects the general developmental order of thebasic color terms in languages. Pitchford [13] investigatedthe applicability of Berlin and Kays’ developmental hierar-chical order on children between 8 − 15 years of age. Hispsychological evidence suggests that children’s knowledge ofbasic–color terms varies across experimental tasks and age.However, his results failed to provide significant support forthe developmental order predicted by Berlin and Kay [1].Hence, another strong motivation of the present study was toinvestigate the existence of a similar developmental order inacquisition of tone modifiers across age.

II. EXPERIMENT

A. Stimuli Preparation and Color Modifier Terms

To specify the stimulus samples, we use the HSV colorspace [14] which is very similar in concept to Munsell [11],[12]. Saturation–Value planes (color tone plane) of threehues, red, green and blue, were divided into six regions.The centers of each region were taken as a stimulus. Thesaturation and value of the six stimuli are shown in Table I.

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TABLE I

CORRESPONDING HSV VALUES FOR GENERATING STIMULI FOR EACH OF

THREE HUES RED, GREEN AND BLUE.

Hue Saturation Value Stimuli

Red Green Blue High 87 High 87 T 10 120 240 High 87 Mid 62 T 2

High 87 Low 37 T 3Mid 62 High 87 T 4Mid 62 Mid 62 T 5Low 37 High 87 T 6

The color tone lexicon provided consisted of the modifiersthat correspond to each region of the color tone plane in theISCC-NBS [8], [9] naming system. They were vivid, bright,strong, dull, pale and dark (see Table II for their Japanesetranslation) [2].

TABLE II

THE SET OF ADJECTIVES SELECTED FROM THE ISCC-NBS COLOR NAME

CHART AND THEIR JAPANESE TRANSLATIONS.

English Adjectives Japanese Translation

vivid azayakabright akaruipale awaistrong koidull kusundadark kurai

B. Participants

All participants were normal trichromatic observers (basedon Ishihara color plates [5]) and native Japanese speakers.The subjects were classified into three categories on the basisof their age: 81 elementary school students (aged between8 to 11), 90 junior high school students (aged between 12to 15), and 50 university students (aged between 19 to 24).The University students were used as a reference group withwhich to compare the developmental level of the two youngerage groups.

C. Experimental Procedure

The stimuli were presented in triads on a color calibratedmonitor to ensure no variance in perception due to differencelighting conditions. The six stimuli from each of the threefundamental hues formed sixty triads. All triads were shownto each subject. In each triad, subjects were asked to pickthe color patch that s/he considered most different from theother two (i.e., the odd–stimulus). Then, for the same triad,s/he was instructed to choose the adjective (color modifier)that better described how the selected odd stimulus differedfrom the other two. Each experiment lasted between 10 to15 minutes.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The first goal was to determine if each of the threeage groups could perceptually discriminate between the sixstimuli.

In order to find the perceptual distances between thestimuli, the INdividual Differences SCALing procedure (IND-SCAL) was applied. In our response data, the number oftimes each color tone stimulus was chosen as the oddstimulus was taken as an estimator of the distance of thatstimulus from other stimuli with which it was compared. Thisproximity data yield the proximity matrix which serves asan input for the INDSCAL. The resulting perceptual spaceshowed that, despite the age differences, all three groupscould perceptually discriminate the set of stimuli into sixdifferent categories. Furthermore, no significant differenceswere observed between the three perceptual spaces.

The second goal was to investigate differences in the se-mantic interpretation of color tones across age. The PrincipalComponent Analysis (PCA) method was employed to identifythe underlying dimensions used to name the differencesbetween an odd stimulus and the other two stimuli. Theresults are shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3. The distancesbetween stimuli reflect the semantic similarities among them.The graphs clearly show that color tone naming varies acrossage groups.

A. Elementary school group

Figure 1 shows that the 8 − 11 years old children usedonly three modifiers to name the six stimuli based only onthe value (intensity) of the stimuli. The stimuli in the firstcategory (i.e., T1, T4, T6) have the same high value butdiffer in saturation. The stimuli in the second category (i.e.,T2, T5) have all mid value but different saturation. The lastcategory contains the stimulus T3, i.e. the stimulus with thelowest value. This shows that, at this age, value is the onlydimension used in naming differences between color tones.Saturation dimension appeared to have almost no effect formodifier responses. Of the six modifiers provided, regardlesshue difference, only three terms bright, dark and strong wereused to describe all six stimuli. Bright was mostly assignedto the stimuli with high value T1, T4 and T6. The termstrong was mostly assigned to the two stimuli with mid value,T2 and T5. Except for green, the modifier dark was mostfrequently used for naming the stimulus with lowest value.Besides, the terms pale and dull were not used at all by theelementary school children.

B. Junior high school group

The use of the saturation dimension in the semanticdiscrimination of color tones emerged at the level of juniorhigh school. Figure 2 shows that the stimuli were betterseparated into 5 categories for all three hues. It was observedthat the component 1 of the three graphs roughly refer to the

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value dimension of the stimuli. High value stimuli were wellseparated from each other with the emergence of the palecategory. However, the discrimination between categorieswas based also on the saturation dimension. T2 and T3were in fact more close to each other than they were to T5.Furthermore, the modifiers pale and dull clearly appeared inthe vocabulary at the level of junior high school. However,while pale is consistently used to name T6, dull is not yet awell learnt and separated category. Bright was still the mostfrequently used modifier for both stimuli T1 and T4.

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Fig. 1. Semantic Space: Elementary Students (From left to right: Red,Green, and Blue)

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Fig. 3. Semantic Space: University Students (From left to right: Red, Green,and Blue)

C. University group

The saturation dimension appeared to have more impor-tance at the university age. The stimuli T1, T4 were far betterseparated than in the other two younger groups, (see Figure3). This was due to the emergence of the concept vivid (T1)that was not consistently used even by the junior students.Saturation played a major role in discriminating betweenlower value stimuli, T2, T3 and T5. although fewer changeswere observed in naming them. While strong was consistently

used for the category T2, yet there was no agreement on theusage of modifier dull.

IV. CONCLUSION

The results shows that age does not affect the ability todiscriminate between color tones. Even in the absence of arich vocabulary for naming each region of the color toneplanes, the two groups elementary and junior high schoolcould perceptually classify six stimuli in a somewhat similarmanner to the adult control group. At the level of elementaryschool, the semantic classification of stimuli was based onlyon the value dimension. It was observed that the use of thesaturation dimension for naming color tones emerged at thelevel of junior high school and became increasingly importantover age. Thus, a developmental order of acquiring modifierterms was suggested as a function of age. The terms bright,strong, dark were acquired at the level of elementary school,pale at the level of junior high school, and vivid only at theuniversity level. The modifier term dull had no consensuseven at the adult level.

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[8] K. L. Kelly and D. B. Judd. The ISCC-NBS Method of DesignatingColors and a Dictionary of Color Names. National Bureau of Standards(USA), 553, 1955.

[9] K. L. Kelly and D. B. Judd. Color Universal Color Language andDictionary of Names. National Bureau of Standards (USA), 440, 1976.

[10] D. Maurer and R. J. Adams. Emergence of the ability to discriminateblue from gray at one month of age. Journal of Experimental ChildPsychology, 44:147–156, 1987.

[11] A. H. Munsell. A Color Notation. Boston, USA, 1905.[12] A. H. Munsell. The Atlas of the Munsell Color System. Boston, USA,

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