Developmental Psychology
1971, Vol. 4, No. 3, 447-45S
"Focal" Color Areas and the Development of
Color Names1
ELEANOR ROSCH HEIDER"
Brown University
Focal colors are those areas of the color space previously found (u^ing
adult subjects) to be the most exemplary of basic color names in m|any
different languages. The present research tested a possible developmental
basis for such universality; the hypothesis was that focal colors were rnore
"salient" than nonfocal colors for young children and were the areai to
which color names initially became attached. In Experiment I, twenty-four
3-year-olds picked any color they wished from sets of focal and nonfpcal
colors to "show to the experimenter." In Experiment II, twenty 4-year-plds
tried to pick colors that matched focal and nonfocal color samples. In Experiment III, twenty-seven 3-4-year-olds chose colors to represent qach
basic color name from arrays containing focal and nonfocal example^ of
the color. Focal colors were more frequently "shown to the experimentjer,"
more accurately matched, and more frequently chosen to represent j the
color name than were nonfocal colors. Implications for the learning of
semantic reference were discussed.
Until recently, the color space was considered a uniform domain which languages
could "cut up" arbitrarily into color name
categories (Brown & Lenneberg, 1954; Lenneberg, 1967; Stefflre, Castillo Vales, &
Morley, 1966). However, there is now evidence for the existence of universal aspects
of color categorization. Berlin and Kay
(1969) found that informants from many
different languages chose the same areas of
the color space (from an array of Munsell
color chips) when the informants were
asked to indicate the best example of basic
color terms in their language. Berlin and
Kay called these clusters of best examples of
color terms "focal points," and argued that
the previous anthropological emphasis on
cross-cultural differences in color names was
derived from looking only at the boundaries
of color names—a more variable aspect of
1
This research was supported in part by Grant
G67-392 from the Foundations Fund for Research
in Psychiatry. The author wishes to thank the
staff and children of the nursery schools of the
University of California at Berkeley for their
cooperation.
2
Requests for reprints should be sent to the
author, Psychology Department, Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island 02912.
categorization than the focal points. Berlin
and Kay's work implies that color terms
have the same "core meaning" across languages.
Heider (1971) examined some cognitive
aspects of color focal points. Postulating that
there were areas of the color space which
were universally "distinctive" or "salient,"
Heider found that the same areas which had
been most focal in Berlin and Kay's task
were the most "codable" (defined by Brown
& Lenneberg, 1954) acrosi languages and
were the most accurately remembered in a
recognition task. Such salienty is most probably based on the physiokjgy of color vision—although the currently known facts of
primate color vision (De Valois & Jacobs,
1968) do not completely explain the location of the focal areas. The color space, far
from being a domain well suited to the study
of the effects of lanugage on thought (cf.
Lenneberg, 1967), appears instead to be a
prime example of the influence of underlying
perceptual-cognitive factors on the formation
and reference of linguistic categories.
What is presently missing from this formulation is the connection betiveen the cognitive and the linguistic—that }s, an account of
how the perceptual-cognitive saliency of cer-
447
ELEANOR ROSCH HEIDER
448
tain areas of the color space might lead to
the development and maintenance of the
universal core meanings of color names. All
of the previous research denning focal areas
of the color space has used adult subjects. It
is not unreasonable, however, to suppose
that these same areas are salient to young
children. If so, as children learned basic
color names, the names might first become
attached to the most salient color areas;
those areas would form the core meaning of
the color terms. Assuming the same areas to
be visually salient cross-culturally, such a
developmental sequence would explain why
color terms should evolve with the same core
meanings in different languages and why the
core meanings should remain constant over
time, even though the terms themselves were
subject to linguistic change.
The present research was designed to test
some aspects of that hypothetical explanation. Three experiments were performed
with preschool children: The first two were
designed to test the saliency of focal color
areas by nonverbal means; the third study
approached the problem of determining the
focal meaning of basic color terms for young
children.
Experiment I
One aspect of psychological saliency may
be defined in terms of "attention"—if one
stimulus is more salient than another, it
should attract attention more readily than
the other; subjects should orient to the salient stimulus in preference to the other. The
hypothesis of the first experiment was that
given a display of focal and nonfocal colors,
young children's attention is caught more
often by the focal colors. This was tested by
means of a game called "Show me a color,"
in which the subject pulled one color out of
a row of colors to present to the experimenter.
Method
Subjects. Subjects were twenty-four 3-year-old
children—15 boys, 9 girls—attending nursery school
(range: from 2 years 11 months to 3 years 10 months;
X = 3 years 5 months). In this and subsequent experiments, subjects were screened for color blindness.
Of the 44 subjects in Experiments I and II, 41 were
classified middle class from the nursery school records.
The socioeconomic status of subjects in Experiment III
was not known. There is no known relation between
socioeconomic status and color naming.
Stimuli, In all of the experiments, Munsell
color chips of glossy finish were used and are
referred to in Munsell notation; C. I. E. tristimulus
values and chromaticity coordinates are available
in Nickerson, Tomaszewski, and Boyd (1953).
The illumination during testing was natural daylight.
The stimuli presented to the subject consisted of
rows of colors, each containing one color representing a focal area—here called a focal color.
Focal colors were the eight chromatic chips which
had been used to represent the focal areas in
Heider (1971). Basically, each focal color was the
chip which was most central and which had
received the greatest number of choices in the
cluster of chips chosen as "best examples" of
each basic color term by Berlin and Kay's (1969)
sample of informants. The method of choosing
these chips is described more fully in Heider
(1971). The focal colors were: red, 5R 4/14;
yellow, 2.5Y 8/16; green, 7.5G 5/10; blue, 2.5PB
5/12; pink, 5R 8/6; orange, 2.5YR 6/16; brown,
SYR 3/6; purple, 5P 3/10.
Each focal color was shown embedded in two
types of arrays. Arrays of Type 1 consisted of
all Munsell values (brightnesses) of the same hue
as the focal chip. There were eight chips in each
array, mounted, in a row, on strips of white cardboard by means of insertion of their tabs into
slits in the cardboard. Each of the chips was at
maximum saturation available in the Munsell Book
of Color for that hue and value. Type 2 arrays
consisted of all Munsell saturations of the same
hue and value as the focal chip. Since the focal
colors were all at maximum saturation (Heider,
1971), the Type 2 arrays were composed of the
focal colors and all lesser saturations of that
hue and value. The number of chips in each
array varied according to the number of saturation levels available, as follows: red, 8; yellow, 9;
green, 6; blue, 7; pink, 4; orange, 9; brown, 4;
purple, 6. Type 2 arrays were mounted in the
same manner as the Type 1 arrays. In both kinds
of arrays, chips, within a given array, were inserted in random order, and were shifted into a
different order after each subject was tested.
Procedure. Subjects were tested individually.
For each array, the experimenter ostensibly covered her eyes with her hands while the subject
pulled one chip out of the array to show to the
experimenter. Instructions to subjects were:
This is a game called "Show me a color."
See how these colors can come out of their
board [the experimenter demonstrates with a
practice array and has the child manipulate
the colors]. Now I'm going to stand over
here and cover my eyes. You pull out one
of these colors to show me. You can pick
any color you want. Okay? [Subjects were
praised for each choice.]
"FOCAL" COLOR AREAS AND COLOR NAMES
Each subject made a total of 16 choices: 1
choice from each of the 8 Type 1 arrays (1 out
of 8 colors in each array) and 1 choice from
each of the 8 Type 2 arrays (1 out of 8, 9, 6, 7,
4, 9, 4, and 6 colors, respectively). Arrays of
both types were mixed together and shown in
random order. After each testing, arrays were
shuffled so that each subject saw the arrays (as
well as the chips within an array) in a different
order.
Results
If choices of color were determined by
random factors, then each chip in an array
should have had an equal probability of
choice. The expected number of choices for
a chip was, therefore, the number of subjects
divided by the number of chips in that array.
In Table 1 can be seen, for both types of
array, the expected and actual number of
choices received by the focal chip. A onesample, direct-difference t test of the difference between the expected and actual number of focal color choices was performed for
each type of array; both were significant (p
< .01). In both types of arrays, subjects
chose focal chips more often than nonfocal
chips. There were no significant sex or age
(within the age range of the experiment)
differences.
449
Discussion
Can the results be interpr 5ted as evidence
that the focal colors were
salient (attention attracting) than the icnfocal colors?
Such an interpretation woujd be invalid if
subjects were performing
task in some
way other than simply picking the first color
to attract their attention f, for example,
subjects were trying to guess which color the
experimenter would like bes t or were trying
to find the best example of the color name
denoting the hue of that am y. That subjects
were interpreting the task in so elaborate a
manner is made unlikely ty the speed of
their response times. Sub ects' responses
were—so rapid that an assis ant found it impossible to time them wit a stopwatch,
That color language was ac ually the major
influence also appears unll ely in view of
the unreliability of the use o color names at
It may be
3 years of age (Istomina, 1^63)
1<
tentatively asserted that foe 1 colors attract
the attention of 3-year-old children more
than do nonfocal colors.
Experiment
The task used in the iirst experiment
involved no criterion of corr ectness or accu-
TABLE 1
CHOICES OF FOCAL COLORS IN "SHOW ME A COLOR" GAME
No. choices of focal color chip
Expected by chance"
Red
Yellow
Green
Blue
Pink
Orange
Brown
Purple
Type 2 arr iys
Type 1 arrays
Color
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
Obtained
Expected by chanceb
Obtained
6°
22
11
3.00
2.67
4.00
3.43
6.00
2.67
6.00
4.00
11
7
8
12
15
9
40
21
6
9
12
16
9
•b Number of subjects (24) divided by number of chips in the array (8).
Number of subjects (24) divided by number of chips in the array (8, 9, 6. 7, 4. 9, 4, 6, respectively).
o Focal red and pink occurred in the same Type 1 array. The array was shown twice; different showings wei used to compute numher of choices for focal red and pink.
450
ELEANOR ROSCH HEIDER
racy of response; however, most tasks performed by adult subjects in previous language-cognition research using colors and
tasks used to define the saliency of color for
adults have involved a criterion of accuracy.
Heider (1971) found that adults remembered focal colors more accurately than nonfocal colors. This memory task proved too
difficult for preschool children. Other studies
have found that young children make errors
even on a color matching task (Dale, 1969;
Istomina, 1963). The hypothesis of the present experiment was that preschool children
match focal colors more accurately than
nonfocal colors.
Method
Subjects. Subjects were twenty 4-year-old children—10 boys, 10 girls—attending nursery school
(range: from 3 years 11 months to 4 years 10
months; X = 4 years 6 months). The task was
first attempted with 3-year-olds, but at that age,
children did not scan the arrays before making
their match. By age 4, scanning did generally occur.
Stimuli. Focal colors were the same as those
used in Experiment I and the same as those used
in Heider's (1971) adult memory task. It was
initially planned to have children match the same
experimental colors to the same array as used
in the adult memory study; however, even the
4-year-olds did not scan both dimensions of that
two-dimensional array. The task was, therefore,
modified to include only one dimension at a
time, as had the arrays in the first experiment.
Two types of arrays were used. Type 1 arrays
were identical to the Type 1 arrays of the first
experiment, except for their mounting. Chips were
fastened in place and were mounted in Munsell
order, left to right, from highest to lowest value.
Type 2 arrays consisted of different hues of the
same value as the focal color chip; every second
Munsell hue of the same value (brightness) as the
focal color was used, a total of 20 chips per
array. The arrays were hues: 2.5 and 7.5 at Value
8; 5 and 10 at Value 8; 2.5 and 7.5 at Value 6;
2.5 and 7.5 at Value 5; 5 and 10 at Value 4;
and 5 and 10 at Value 3. Although there were
eight focal colors, only six arrays were needed
because two sets of focal colors occurred in the
same arrays. The chips of each array were
mounted in Munsell order, the long wavelengths to
the left. All colors of all arrays were at the maximum saturation available for that hue and value.
Since the hypothesis of the experiment concerned the difference in matching accuracy between focal and nonfocal colors, a sample of nonfocal, as well as of focal colors, was needed.
Nonfocal colors were defined as colors from the
innominate areas of the color space, that is, the
areas of Berlin and Kay's (1969) array which
received no choices of best example of a basic
color term in any of the languages in their
sample. Two types of nonfocal color had been
used in Heider (1971): internominal colors, which
were colors from the central regions of the
innominate areas, and boundary colors, which
were from the parts of the innominate areas
which bordered on the focal areas. The distinction
between internominal and boundary colors could
not be maintained for the Type 1 arrays of the
present study, in which all colors of an array
were of the same hue, but could be for the Type
2 arrays. Internominal and boundary colors chosen
for the Type 2 arrays were the chips closest to
an internominal or boundary color in Berlin and
Kay's array. The (undifferentiated) nonfocal color
chips matched from the Type 1 arrays were:
5R 7/8; 5R 5/14; 2.5Y 6/12; 2.5YR 4/10; 5YR
5/12; 7.5G 3/8; 2.5PB 7/8; 5P 5/10. The nonfocal colors matched from Type 2 arrays were:
internominal colors—10GY 8/8; 10G 4/10; 2.5BG
8/6; 7.5G 6/10; 10GY 3/6; 10BG 3/6; 2.5Y 5/8;
7.5R 5/14; boundary colors—SYR 8/6; 10R 4/12;
7.5YR 8/6; 7.5YR 6/14; 10YR 3/4; 10P 3/10;
7.5B 5/Max; 2.5BG 5/10.
Procedure. Ten subjects were tested with Type
1 arrays; 10 different subjects performed the task
with Type 2 arrays. The comparison chips were
mounted on 3 X 5 inch white cards and shown
in random order. A subject was shown the
standard chips, one at a time, and asked to
point to the color on the array that was exactly
the same as that one. Each child was seen individually. For both types of array, the order of
presentation of the various standards with their
corresponding comparison array was random.
Results
A match was scored correct if the subject
picked the identical chip. Incorrect guesses
were all scored 0; meaningful error distance
scores could not be computed because perceptual distances between Munsell chips are
not equal. However, it was possible to score
whether the errors made for boundary colors
were in the direction toward or away from
the relevant focal color.
Table 2 shows mean accuracy scores for
the different categories of standard color, for
both types of array, and the t ratios for the
differences between them. It was clear that
focal colors were more accurately matched
than either internominal or boundary colors.
The difference between internominal and
boundary colors was not significant. Girls
were more accurate in overall matching than
boys, but there were no sex differences in the
relative accuracy of matching focal and
nonfocal colors. Similarly, age correlated
with general matching accuracy (r = .41, p
451
"FOCAL" COLOR AREAS AND COLOR NAMES
TABLE 2
COLOR MATCHING
Dependent variable
Array
Mean matching accuracy
t ratio of comp;irison
Type 1 arrays
Full arrays
Discriminability "controlled"
FC
Non-FC
FC vs. non- 'C
6.4
4.3
3.4
2.3
7.66*
6.12*
Type 2 arrays
Full arrays
Discriminability "controlled"
Note.—FC
* p < .01.
FC
1C
BC
FC vs. 1C
FC vs. B< 2
1C vs. BC
6.3
4.3
2.6
2.2
3.5
2.3
6.87*
4.99*
3.77*
3.06*
1.49
.08
focal color; 1C = internominat color; BC = boundary color.
< .05), but not with the relative accuracy of
matching focal and nonfocal colors.
The direction-of-error choices for boundary colors was also revealing. Out of 43 errors made in matching boundary colors, 28
were in the direction of the focal color. This
difference is significant by the sign test (Siegel, 1956); a t test of the difference between
the number of boundary color errors each
subject made toward and away from the
focal color was also significant (t — 2.51,
p < .05). When subjects erred in matching
boundary colors, they were more likely to
choose a color closer to the focal color than
was the original.
Because Munsell chips are not perceptually equidistant, some chips in the arrays
were more "discriminable" (perceptually
more distant) from their neighbors than
other chips. In Experiment II, such discriminability differences remained constant for
each subject because the chips within an
array were shown in the same order to each
subject. Brown and Lenneberg (1954)
found that discriminability correlated with
accuracy of recognition in a memory task. It
was possible, therefore, that liscriminability
was a confounding factor .n the present
study. The problem of discrminability was
approached in two different rays: a statistical manipulation and an add tional brief experiment.
In the first examination of the discriminability problem, discriminabili y scores for the
24 standard colors were computed by the
method described in Brown and Lenneberg
(1954), modified to take accpunt of the fact
that in the present arrays, e ch chip had at
most two neighbors, t tests t :tween the discriminability of the focal olors and the
other color categories were perfomed; the
discriminability of focal col TS was significantly higher than that of eacti of the categories of nonfocal colors. Ho ,vever, the differences were due entire! to the high
discriminability of focal "yeJ ow" and focal
"orange." With the yellow
orange arrays
removed, there were no dif fences in discriminability for any categor; of colors. The
matching accuracy data w jre reanalyzed
omitting yellow and orange. The means and
t ratios for this analysis a re included in
452
ELEANOR ROSCH HEIDER
Table 2. Focal colors remained more accurately matched than internominal colors,
boundary colors, or (undifferentiated) nonfocal colors.
The second study of discriminability was
based on the question of why matching errors were made at all. Were such errors the
result of an actual failure to discriminate the
mismatched colors? The perceptual distance
scores from which the Brown-Lenneberg discriminability measure is computed were
based on adult norms (Newhall, Nickerson,
& Judd, 1943). It remained possible that
the discriminability of colors was different
for children and that the matching errors
made by children reflected failures to
discriminate. A brief additional experiment was performed to determine whether
4-year-old children were able to discriminate the colors which they had frequently
confused. Four pairs of colors were chosen
from the test colors which subjects had
consistently confused (matched wrongly)
with each other. These pairs were (a)
10P 3/10 and 5P 3/10, (6) 7.5G 6/10 and
2.5G 6/10, (c) 7.5R 5/14 and 2.4R 5/14,
and (d) 10GY 3/6 and 5G 3/8. Subjects
were 8 children out of those performing the
initial experiment who had erred on at least
three out of the four pairs and 8 more children who had not previously been tested.
Discrimination between the pairs of chips
was presented as an oddity problem; three
chips of one color and one of the other were
displayed, and the subject was asked to point
to the one that was different. The results were
simple; only 1 out of the 16 subjects failed
to achieve a perfect score on these problems.
It was not inability to discriminate colors
which caused the subjects of Experiment II
to make matching errors.
Discussion
The basic hypothesis received confirmation; focal colors were matched more accurately by 4-year-old children than nonfocal colors. The difference could not be
attributed to differences in the discriminability of the colors (as computed by psychophysical measures obtained from adult subjects) nor to inability to discriminate some
of the colors on the part of the 4-year-old
subjects actually tested. Boundary colors
tended to be mismatched toward the focal
colors, indicating an assimilation effect.
The correlation of age with general accuracy on the matching task is probably due to
the kind of scanning and search procedure
required by the task. The greater overall
matching accuracy of the girls may be due to
the general slight tendency for preschool
girls to exceed boys on intellectual tasks
(Maccoby, 1966) or to greater female sensitivity to color (cf. Nash, 1970). However,
the fact that there were neither age nor sex
differences in the relative accuracy of matching focal and nonfocal colors indicates that
neither age nor sex is a variable relevant to
the particular issues under question in these
experiments.
In summary: Measured by accuracy of
matching, focal colors were more salient
than nonfocal colors for 4-year-old children.
Experiment III
The first two experiments dealt with the
saliency of focal colors to young children
using essentially nonverbal tasks; these experiments gave no information about the
child's knowledge of color names. The hypothesis behind the third experiment was
that color names initially become attached to
(come to denote) focal areas for children.
This hypothesis could not be tested directly
with American children because their history
of color-name learning prior to the experimental situation was unknown; that is, the
kind of explicit teaching of color names a
subject had already received was unknown
and the color of objects that had been previously used as color name exemplars for
him was unknown. However, it was possible
to test whether, at the same time that children learn to connect color names correctly
with colors, they also know that focal color
areas are the best examples of the basic
color names.
Method
Subjects were twenty-seven 3- and 4-year-old
children—11 boys, 16 girls—attending a mother's
cooperative nursery school (range: from 3 years
0 months to 4 years 7 months; X — 4 years 1
month). No subject had participated in the earlier
experiments.
Stimuli were the Type 2 arrays from the second experiment, those of the same value, but
453
"FOCAL" COLOR AREAS AND COLOR NAMES
different hue, as the focal colors. The procedure
was simple: The subject was shown an array
and asked, "Which is the 'X' one; show me the
'X' one," where X was the basic color name whose
focal color was contained in that array. In the few
cases where the subject pointed to more than
one chip, he was asked, "Which is the most 'X'
one; show me the 'X'ist one."
Results
Responses were scored as one of three
possible types: (a) incorrect, that is, falling
on a chip which clearly belonged to some
other basic color name than the one the experimenter had asked for. Such responses
were interpreted as an indication that the
subject did not know the meaning of that
color name; (b) correct, that is, falling
within the area which adult English speakers
felt could be designated by the basic color
name. To derive these areas, 10 college undergraduates were asked to point to all
chips that "could be called 'X'," where X
was the basic color name whose focal color
was contained in the array. Chips which at
least half the adults said could be called X
were included in the area scored "correct";
(c) focal, that is, the focal chip itself was
chosen.
The hypothesis of the experiment concerned the conditional probability of c given
b. That is, if the meaning of a color name
was known at all, was there a greater than
chance probability that the focal color itself
would be chosen to represent the color
name? If colors within the correct area were
chosen randomly by subjects who knew the
color name, the expected number of subjects
to choose the focal color would be the number of subjects receiving a correct score for
that name, divided by the number of chips
counted as correct answers for that name.
Table 3 shows the number of expected and
actual choices of each focal color. A onesample, direct-difference t test of the difference between expected and actual focal
color choices was significant (p < .01).
Subjects who knew the meaning of a color
name were likely to choose the focal color
to represent the name.
Although incorrect color choices decreased with age, as could be expected,
there was no relation of age to choice of
focal chips within the correct category.
There were no significant sex differences.
Discussion
The basic hypothesis was that a color
name becomes initially attached to the focal
color area included by that name because of
the saliency of the focal area. Had the results of Experiment II shown that knowledge
of the general area denoted by color terms
TABLE 3
CHOICE OF FOCAL COLOR TO REPRESENT COLOR NAME
No, choices
Color
No. chips counted
correct"
Red
Yellow
Green
Blue
Pink
Orange
Brown
Purple
a
No. correct choices'1
5
25
2
22
22
20
17
23
15
14
5
5
5
2
4
3
Expected choices of
focal chip by chance0
Focal chip choices
actually obtained"1
5.00
11.00
4.40
5.00
3.40
11.50
3.75
4.67
10
21
Number of chips to which more than one-half of the undergraduate judges applied the color name.
t> Number of subjects (out of 27) who chose one of the chips counted as correct when asked to find the color.
« Number of correct choices divided by number of chips counted as correct.
d
Number of subjects (out of 27) who chose the focal chip when asked to find the color.
12
12
4
19
10
9
ELEANOR ROSCH HEIDER
454
precedes choice of focal colors to represent
the color name (that is, had subjects chosen
focal colors no more frequently than any
other color within the group of chips designated as a color name by the undergraduate
judges), it would have been evidence
strongly contrary to the hypothesis. The results actually obtained showed the hypothesis to be possible but did not prove it. Many
factors other than focal color saliency could
have led to these same results. For example,
color name exemplars could be taught simultaneously with the names themselves, or it
could be that in adult usage, focal colors are
more frequently referred to by color names
(of any kind) than are nonfocal colors. What
is needed are subjects from a language which
does not have names for some of the focal
areas; names for those areas could then be
taught with a controlled learning history,
and subjects' interpretations of the meaning
of the names elicited at various stages of the
teaching. Such a study is in progress with the
Dani of New Guinea, a people with a very
limited color terminology (Heider, 1970).
General Discussion
The present research shows a possible developmental basis for the evolution and
maintenance of universal core meanings of
basic color names. It was proposed that
focal colors are perceptually salient for
young children as well as adults, and that
color names initially become attached to
these most salient areas. The evidence from
the three experiments performed was confirmatory but necessarily incomplete. Focal
colors were more frequently chosen by 3year-olds in a free choice situation than nonfocal colors and were better matched by 4year-olds than nonfocal colors; focal colors
were also used to represent basic color terms
by both age groups more frequently than
nonfocal colors. The unsolved problem is
whether the saliency or the naming is prior.
It could be argued that young children were
more likley to choose focal colors and to
match focal color correctly because they had
already learned focal colors as the core
meaning of color terms. Such an interpretation of the saliency data is made unlikely by
the cross-cultural similarities (Berlin & Kay,
1969; Heider, 1971), but the interpreta-
tion cannot yet be eliminated. Ideally, saliency measures for both children and adults,
and records of the controlled history of the
learning of color names, should be obtained
for speakers of a language which does not
have names for all focal areas—a project
currently in progress.
The findings of the present study are potentially relevant to another question—the
relation of developmental data to the linguistic evolution of color terms. If the saliency
of certain areas of the color space were the
basis for the evolution of color names,
should not names for the more salient areas
evolve first?
From a search of the anthropological literature, Berlin and Kay (1969) argued that
color terms in all languages evolved in the
following fixed order (achromatic colors are
omitted): (a) red, (b) green-yellow, (c)
blue, (d) brown, and (e) pink-orange-purple. In the present research, the relative saliency of each focal color in Experiment I,
and the relative frequency with which each
focal color was chosen to represent the color
name in Experiment III, can be computed
from Tables 1 and 3 by taking the differences between the expected and obtained
number of choices. It should be noted that
the saliency orders so derived do not correlate with the size of the color category (that
is, the number of chips called by each color
name by the undergraduate judges), and
thus cannot be claimed to be an artifact of
category size. Neither the saliency order of
the focal colors in Experiment I, the matching accuracy order obtained from Experiment II, nor the frequency with which focal
colors were chosen to represent the category
name in Experiment III matched Berlin and
Kay's proposed evolutionary order. Only one
measure of the present study, the number of
subjects who knew each color name (Table
3), did not, with the exception of orange,
contradict the proposed evolutionary order.
(This measure also agreed with Istomina's,
1963, Russian data.)
Because of the inadequacy of the data on
both sides—the unreliability of the literature
on which Berlin and Kay based their account and the failure of the various psychological measures to produce orders consistent
either with Berlin and Kay or with each
"FOCAL" COLOR AREAS AND COLOR NAMES
other—the relation of developmental data to
linguistic evolution must remain an open
question at present. The results of the present study were not dependent on an ordering
hypothesis for focal colors. The findings
demonstrated that focal color areas as a
whole were more salient to young children
and more likely to be used to represent the
basic color name than were other areas of
the color space.
Although the present research dealt only
with the domain of colors, it raises questions
about semantic reference in other domains.
Studies of concept attainment are typically
constructed as problems in the learning of
conjunctions of attributes. However, much
actual learning of semantic reference, particularly in perceptual domains, may occur
through generalization from focal exemplars—a process made reasonable, if not
proved, by the present study of a possible
basis for the learning of color names.
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