The Acquisition of Color Terms

Presenter Sayaka Abe

Overview

I. Acquisition of word meanings

II. The Developmental Acquisition of Basic Colour Terms (by Nicola J Pitchford & Kathy T. Mullen)

I. Acquisition of word meanings

• Children starts learning individual words around 1 year old.

mama, do (‘dog’), choo-choo (‘train’)

• However, structure of words are not quite like adults

Example 1 ‘apple’

1st ‘apple’

“apple”

“apple”

not “apple”

not “apple”

not “apple”

not “apple”an apple = round, medium-sized thing.

I can eat it, it tastes good, it has black small seeds, it is typically red but sometimes green

“apple”

not “apple”

OVEREXTENSION

2nd ‘apple’

Example 2 ‘moon’

1st ‘moon’

“moon” = round, bright yellow thing with a face.

UNDEREXTENSION

“moon” = round, yellowish thing in the sky. The one in my book has a face.

“moon”

not “moon”

not “moon”not “moon”

not “moon”

“moon”

“moon” = round, yellowish thing in the sky. The one in my book has a face. Sometimes it does not have to look round.

So,

• Learning a single word is not as simple as it appears, and it takes some time and many encounters with actual instances.

II. How about color terms? (Pitchford and Mullen 2006)

• Previous findings:

Color terms are learned much later than everyday objects.

i.e. Color concepts appear to be even more complex than everyday objects

6 features of color term acquisition(Bornstein 1985)

(1) Children can perceive (discriminate, match and categorize) colour from early infancy, well before they learn colour names.

(2) Children answer questions about colour with colour words prior to accurate colour term acquisition.

(3) Children acquire different colour terms before they have referential meaning

(4) Colour terms are applied erroneously in a haphazard manner

(5) Colour terms are acquired relatively late, at around four years of age

(6) Girls tend to acquire colur terms at an earlier age than boys.

ability to see color use of color terms

A. Seeing colors (language- independent)

By 4 months of age, • infants can distinguish between colours. (e.g.

Maurer & Adams 1987; Teller 1998; Teller and Bornstein 1985)

• sensitivity to colour contrasts develops alongside sensitivity to differences in luminance. (Allen, Banks & Norcia 1993; Teller 1998)

• Basic colour categories are perceived (Bornstein, Kessen & Weiskopf 1976; Catherwood, Crassini & Freilberg 1989; FGranklin & Davies 2004)

B. Using language of color

• A lower age limit by which children develop accurate colour naming is around 4 years of age.

• Sometimes children have been shown to require hundreds of presentations of colour term paired with a colour sample before the appropriate term is learned.

• The tardiness of colour term acquisition is contrasting with other types of word learning such as everyday objects, which suggests, colour is a harder concept than others.

However…

• It is not appropriate to compare colour terms and terms of familiar object since colour is a perceptual property of object, but not an object per se. So it might be more appropriate to compare the lexical acquisition of colour terms to that of other perceptual attributes.

Previous suggestions

• Children may initially conceptualize object shape, as it is relatively more informative about the function of an object than is colour (Au & Markman 1987; Macario 1991; Soja 1994)

Three questions

1. Are colour terms acquired late?

2. Are basic colour terms acquired in a fixed developmental order?

3. What factors help shape the developmental acquisition of basic colour terms?

Question 1Are colour terms acquired late?

Children tested 2 – 5 years

• colours (red and green)

• sizes (big and small)

• speeds (fast and slow, side to side)

• shapes (T an O)

a. Comprehension task

• Present two stimuli:

a big, red T moving slowly

vs.

a big green T moving slowly

• Ask “which is green?”

1-b. Naming task

• Present stimuli like above (with voice over saying “green” or “red”)

• Ask “What’s this one?”

Results of 1a and 1b

• Both comprehension and naming tasks show that there is no difference in children’s ability to either comprehend or name colour compared to the other visual attributes by children of any age.

c. Matching task

• Present: one of the stimuli like above. “See this?”

• Present several stimuli including only one that matches the first stimulus. “Can you find another one?”

Results of 1c

• 3 years old: colour was a salient object property (55%) (shape 26%, speed 9%, size 10%)

• 4+ years old: shape became the most salient attributes on which to make perceptual groupings (90%) (colour 7%, speed 1%, size 2%)

• Shift in perceptual saliency from colour to shape between 3 and 4 years old (Consistent with Brian & Goodenough 1929; Kagan & Lemkin 1961; Suchman & Trabasso 1966; Miller 1977; Baldwin 1989)

• Reflecting an awareness of object shape as more indicative of category membership than object colour (Baldwin 1989; Landau, Smith & Jones 1988)

Question 2Are basic colour terms acquired in a fixed developmental order?

PRIMARY COLOURS SECONDARY COLOURS

Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976)

Prediction

• Children will learn the six primary colour terms at earlier developmental stage than the five non-primary colour terms.

Previous findings

• Advantage for naming primary over non-primary colour terms has been found in some studies on English (Heider 1977, Johnson 1977, Cruse 1977) and other lgs. (Davies, Corbett, McGurk & Jarrett 1994)

• Some studies report that such an advantage is not found in non-production tasks.

Issue of methodology

Tasks

• Colour comprehension“Point to the red overalls.” (no verbal response

required)No advantage for the primary colours.

• Colour naming (production)“What’s the colour of my overalls?”Significant advantage for primary over non-primary

colour terms on the colour-naming task, but only for children with a language-age of three years.

Developmental order?

• Children acquired an accurate knowledge of the basic colour terms in two distinct temporal periods

Stage 1: Acquire knowledge of 9 terms yellow, blue, black, green, white, pink, orange, red and purple (36 to 40 months). The order is unconstrained.

Stage 2: brown and grey

• The finding is consistent with recent cross-cultural studies (Davidoff, Davies % Roberson 1999; Roberson, Davies and Davidoff 2000), and questions the assertion of Berlin and Kay (1969)

• i.e. It questions the assertions of Berlin and Kay that the development order of colour term acquisition is constrained by visual neurophysiology.

Then other factors?

Question 3What factors help shape the

developmental acquisition of basic colour terms?

3 sub-questions:

(1) Perception: Does perception limit the acquisition of the terms brown and grey?

(2) Environment: Does linguistic input shape colour term acquisition?

(3) Preference: Does colour preference influence colour term acquisition?

(1) Perception Language

Does perception limit the acquisition of the terms brown and grey?

Previous findings

Children frequently mistake brown for gray and vice versa

Findings

• Colour discrimination taskChildren’s ability to discriminate all the

basic colours was flawless.

• Colour comprehension tasks Children’s comprehension of brown and

grey was significantly poorer than their comprehension of the other nine basic colour terms

(cont’d)• Matching task (blue vs. green, pink vs. purple,

and brown and grey’) shows a similar number of colour-based matches across all three conditions.- blue vs. green = 47%- pink vs. purple = 47%

- brown vs. grey = 51%the colour stimuli did not influence children’s

decisions to use colour as the basis for perceptual grouping

brown and grey do not appear to be any less salient as colours to preschool children than the nine basic categories that are conceptualized earlier.

(2) Environmental Factor

Does linguistic input shape colour term acquisition?

- books for pre-school children (374 books)

- mother’s spoken interactions with children (2-3 years) (CHILDES database, 34 hours)

Findings

• Supported previous claims: advantage for primary over primary colour terms, but

• primary colours are acquired at the same time as the non-primaries, orange, pink and purple

• Linguistic frequency may, however, contribute to the late acquisition of the colour terms brown and grey

(3) Preference EffectDoes colour preference influence colour term

acquisition?

Previous studies:- Children might focus their attention toward

colours the prefer in their environment, which may, in term make these colours more memorable (Zentner 2001)

- Differences in colour preference might reflect underlying differences in the biological meaningfulness of particular colours, which may in tern, colour term learning.

Findings

- Task of colour preference (by having children indicate the colour they like the best, and reduce one by one, etc.)

- Task of colour naming

Named brown and grey significantly less than others So, colour preference and colour naming are

developmentally linkedThey disliked brown and grey irrespective of whether or not

they could name brown and grey accurately. Differences in colour preference are established before

accurate knowledge of colour terms is acquired

Summary1. Though colour terms are acquired later than

other objects due to differences in functional significance, no delays are found when compared with terms used to describe other visual attributes.

2. Little advantage in the acquisition of primary over non-primary colour terms.Instead, the difference between brown + grey vs. other 9 terms

3. Perception did not appear to limit colour conceptualization, but linguistic input, colour preference and colour naming are developmentally linked.