Language and perceptual categorisation

In a pioneering set of experiments, Rosch investigated the colour processing of a remote traditional culture. It was concluded that colours form universally natural and salient categories. However, our own cross-cultural research, backed up by neuropsychological data and interference studies, indicates that perceptual categories are derived from the words in the speaker's language. The new data support a rather strong version of the Whorfian view that perceptual categories are organized by the linguistic systems of our mind.

[1]  R M Weist,et al.  The interaction of language and thought in children's language acquisition: a crosslinguistic study , 1997, Journal of Child Language.

[2]  James Stanlaw,et al.  Making light of keeping color categories in the dark: Some arguments against Saunders and van Brakel's notions of trivial constraints in color nomenclature , 1997, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[3]  J. Davidoff,et al.  Color categories are not universal: replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[4]  M. Webster,et al.  Variations in normal color vision. II. Unique hues. , 2000, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[5]  Jules Davidoff,et al.  Similarity and categorisation: neuropsychological evidence for a dissociation in explicit categorisation tasks , 1999, Cognition.

[6]  Marc H. Bornstein,et al.  On the development of color naming in young children: Data and theory , 1985, Brain and Language.

[7]  M. Goodale,et al.  Frames of Reference for Perception and Action in the Human Visual System , 1998, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[8]  S. Carey.  Conceptual Change in Childhood , 1985 .

[9]  D. Gentner,et al.  Comparison and Categorization in the Development of Relational Similarity , 1996 .

[10]  D. Carey,et al.  More thoughts on perceiving and grasping the Müller–Lyer illusion , 1999, Neuropsychologia.

[11]  E. R. Heider.  Universals in color naming and memory. , 1972, Journal of experimental psychology.

[12]  M. Fischer.  How sensitive is hand transport to illusory context effects? , 2000, Experimental Brain Research.

[13]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Identification and adaptation of hue: Parallels in the operation of mechanisms that underlie categorical perception in vision and in audition , 1985, Psychological research.

[14]  P. Kay.  Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution , 1969 .

[15]  R. Vautin,et al.  Neuronal mechanisms of color categorization in areas V1, V2 and V4 of macaque monkey visual cortex , 1996, Behavioural Brain Research.

[16]  J. Davidoff,et al.  The colour cognition of children , 1993, Cognition.

[17]  D. Scott.  Perceptual learning. , 1974, Queen's nursing journal.

[18]  Leslie G. Ungerleider.  Two cortical visual systems , 1982 .

[19]  Melvyn A. Goodale,et al.  The Effect of Pictorial Illusion on Prehension and Perception , 1998, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[20]  B. Saunders,et al.  Are there nontrivial constraints on colour categorization? , 1997, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[21]  D. B. Judd,et al.  Final Report of the O.S.A. Subcommittee on the Spacing of the Munsell Colors , 1943 .

[22]  J. Davidoff,et al.  The categorical perception of colors and facial expressions: The effect of verbal interference , 2000, Memory & cognition.

[23]  R. McIntosh.  Seeing size and weight , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[24]  Elizabeth S. Spelke,et al.  Sources of Flexibility in Human Cognition: Dual-Task Studies of Space and Language , 1999, Cognitive Psychology.

[25]  S. Jackson,et al.  The Ponzo illusion affects grip-force but not grip-aperture scaling during prehension movements. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[26]  F. Pavani,et al.  Are perception and action affected differently by the Titchener circles illusion? , 1999, Experimental Brain Research.

[27]  Tim Shallice,et al.  Selective Preservation of Naming from Description and the “Restricted Preverbal Message” , 2000, Brain and Language.

[28]  R. Snowden.  The last grasp? , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[29]  John J. Magee,et al.  Categorical perception of facial expressions , 1992, Cognition.

[30]  Eleanor Rosch Heider,et al.  Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Colour Names , 1972 .

[31]  N. Soja,et al.  Young children's concept of color and its relation to the acquisition of color words. , 1994, Child development.

[32]  K. Goldstein.  Language and Language Disturbances , 1948 .

[33]  J. Russell.  Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies. , 1994, Psychological bulletin.

[34]  P. Kay,et al.  What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? , 1983 .

[35]  D. Perrett,et al.  Facial expression megamix: Tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition , 1997, Cognition.

[36]  Koen Lamberts,et al.  Knowledge, Concepts, and Categories , 1997 .

[37]  Rich Gossweiler,et al.  Perceiving geographical slant , 1995, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[38]  Melvyn A Goodale,et al.  Independent effects of pictorial displays on perception and action , 2000, Vision Research.

[39]  P. Ekman.  Facial expressions of emotion: an old controversy and new findings. , 1992, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[40]  S. Harnad.  Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview , 1987 .

[41]  S. Levinson,et al.  LANGUAGE AND SPACE , 1996 .

[42]  M. Fahle,et al.  Grasping Visual Illusions: No Evidence for a Dissociation Between Perception and Action , 2000, Psychological science.

[43]  M. A. Goodale,et al.  Grasping after a Delay Shifts Size-Scaling from Absolute to Relative Metrics , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[44]  P. Jusczyk.  From general to language-specific capacities: the WRAPSA Model of how speech perception develops , 1993 .

[45]  J A SWETS,et al.  Is there a sensory threshold? , 1961, Science.

[46]  Robert L. Goldstone.  Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[47]  J. Vauclair,et al.  Categorization of alphanumeric characters by Guinea baboons : within- and between-class stimulus discrimination , 1996 .

[48]  D. Carey,et al.  Do action systems resist visual illusions? , 2001, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[49]  J. Davidoff,et al.  Colour categories in a stone-age tribe , 1999, Nature.

[50]  D. Slobin.  From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking” , 1996 .

[51]  P. Kay,et al.  The linguistic significance of the meanings of basic color terms , 1978 .

[52]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Color vision and hue categorization in young human infants. , 1976, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[53]  J E Cutting,et al.  Comparing effects of the horizontal-vertical illusion on grip scaling and judgment: relative versus absolute, not perception versus action. , 1999, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[54]  Pierre R. Dasen,et al.  Balinese spatial orientation : Some empirical evidence of moderate linguistic relativity , 1998 .

[55]  S. Harnad.  Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition , 1990 .

[56]  M. Goodale,et al.  Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand , 1995, Current Biology.

[57]  E. Rosch,et al.  Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[58]  P. Donkelaar.  Pointing movements are affected by size-contrast illusions , 1999, Experimental Brain Research.

[59]  Marc Brysbaert,et al.  The Whorfian hypothesis and numerical cognition: is `twenty-four' processed in the same way as `four-and-twenty'? , 1998, Cognition.

[60]  B. L. Whorf.  The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language , 1997 .

[61]  Eleanor Rosch Heider,et al.  The structure of the color space in naming and memory for two languages , 1972 .

[62]  P. Kay,et al.  Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution , 1973 .

[63]  J. Davidoff,et al.  Cognition Through Color , 1992 .

[64]  The psychophysics of color. , 1995, Applied optics.

[65]  D L Medin,et al.  Concepts and conceptual structure. , 1989, The American psychologist.

[66]  E. Rosch.  The nature of mental codes for color categories. , 1975 .

[67]  S. Jackson,et al.  Vision: Getting to grips with the Ebbinghaus illusion , 2001, Current Biology.

[68]  Jules Davidoff,et al.  Impaired retrieval of object-colour knowledge with preserved colour naming , 1994, Neuropsychologia.

[69]  S. Levinson,et al.  Rethinking Linguistic Relativity , 1991, Current Anthropology.

[70]  D. L. Miller,et al.  Color categories in thought and language: The psychophysics of color , 1997 .

[71]  Gerrit Storms,et al.  Prototype and Exemplar-Based Information in Natural Language Categories , 2000 .

[72]  D R Proffitt,et al.  Perception-Action Dissociations of a Walkable Müller-Lyer Configuration , 2000, Psychological science.

[73]  I Abramov,et al.  Color appearance: on seeing red--or yellow, or green, or blue. , 1994, Annual review of psychology.

[74]  C. L. Hardin,et al.  Color categories in thought and language: Author index , 1997 .

[75]  D. Perrett,et al.  Categorical Perception of Morphed Facial Expressions , 1996 .