Human adults with normal vision, with three types of color-blindness, or with complete absence of vision since birth rank-ordered the similarities of all pairs of colors corresponding to nine hue names. When presented with the names only, subjects with any color vision produced rankings for which multidimensional scaling yielded Newton's color circle. When subjects were presented with the colors themselves, the recovered color circle remained the same for the normally sighted but collapsed along the red-green dimension for the color-blind. Based on their rankings by color names, the totally blind subjects all fell outside the range of the color-normal subjects but partly overlapped the color-deficient subjects; a rare rod monochromat roughly approximated the color-normal subjects. These results, along with those of Marmor (1978) and Izmailov and Sokolov (this issue), suggest how visual experience, language, and innate structure contribute to the mental representation of colors.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BerlinB.KayP. (1969). Basic color terms.Berkeley: University of California Press.
2.
CarrollJ.D.ChangJ.-J. (1970a). Analysis of individual differences in multidimensional scaling via an N-way generalization of “Eckart-Young” decomposition. Psychometrika, 35, 283–319.
3.
CarrollJ.D.ChangJ.-J. (1970b). Reanalysis of some color data of Helm's by INDSCAL procedure for individual differences multidimensional scaling. InProceedings of the 78th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (pp.137–138). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
4.
ChangJ.-J.CarrollJ.D. (1980). Three are not enough: An INDSCAL analysis suggesting that color space has seven (±1) dimensions. COLOR Research and Application, 5, 193–206.
5.
CooperL.A.ShepardR.N. (1984). Turning something over in the mind. Scientific American, 251, 106–114.
6.
FarnsworthD. (1947), The Farnsworth dichotomous test for color blindness.New York: Psychological Corp.
7.
FillenbaumS.RapoportA. (1991). Structure in the subjective lexicon.New York: Academic Press.
8.
FinkeR.A.ShepardR.N. (1986). Visual functions of mental imagery. InBoffK.R.KaufmanL.ThomasJ.P., (Eds.), Handbook of perception and human performance (pp.37-1–37-55). New York: Wiley.
9.
HelmCD. (1964). A multidimensional ratio scaling analysis of perceived color relations. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 54, 256–262.
10.
HeringE. (1964). Outlines of a theory of the light sense (Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, (Original work published 1878).
11.
HumeD. (1896), A treatise of human nature. (Selby-BiggeL.A., Ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press (Original work published 1739).
12.
HirvichL.M.JamesonD. (1957). An opponent-process theory of color vision, Psychological Review, 64, 384–404.
13.
IndowT. (1988). Multidimensional studies of the Munsell color solid. Psychological Review, 95, 456–470.
14.
IndowT.KanazawaK. (1960) Multidimensional Mapping of Munsell colors varying in hue, chroma, and value. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 330–336.
15.
IndowT.UchizonoT. (1960). Multidimensional mapping of Munsell colors varying in hue and chroma. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 321–329.
KaiskalJ.B.YoungF.W.SeeryJ.B. (1973). Mow to use KYST: A very flexible program to do multidimensional scaling und unfolding.Unpublished manuscript. (Available from the AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ).
21.
MarmorG.S. (1978). Age at onset of blindness and the development of the semantics of color names. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 25, 267–278.
22.
MillerG.A.Johnson-LairdP.N. (1976). Language and perception.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23.
Munsell Book of Color (Glossy Finish Collection in two binders). (1976). Baltimore: Macbeth Division of Kollmorgen Corp.
24.
NewtonI. (1704). Opticks (Book 3). London: S. Smith and B. Walford.
25.
PhillipsL.W. (1958). Mediated verbal similarity as a determinant of the generalization of a conditioned GSR. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55, 56–62.
26.
RapoportA.FillenbaumS. (1972). An experimental study of semantic structure. InRomneyA.K.ShepardR.N.NerloveS.B., (Eds.), Multidimensional scaling: Theory and applications in the behavioral sciences: Vol 2. Applications (pp.93–131). New York: Seminar Press.
27.
SchneiderB. (1972), Multidimensional scaling of color difference in the pigeon. Perception & Psychophysics, 12, 373–378.
28.
ShepardR.N. (1962a). The analysis of proximities: Multidimensional scaling with an unknown distance function, I. Psychometrlka, 27, 125–140.
29.
ShepardR.N. (1962b). The analysis of proximities: Multidimensional scaling with an unknown distance function, ILPsychometrika, 27, 219–246.
30.
ShepardR.N. (1974). Representation of structure in similarity data: Problems and prospects. Psychometrika, 39, 373–421.
31.
ShepardR.N. (1975). Form, formation, and transformation of internal representations. InSolsoR., (Ed.), Information processing and cognition: The Loyola Symposium (pp.87–122). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
32.
ShepardR.N. (1978a). The circumplex and related topological manifolds in the study of perception. InShyeS., (Ed.), Theory construction and data analysis in the behavioral sciences (pp.29–80). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
33.
ShepardR.N. (1978b). The mental image. American Psychologist, 33, 125–137.
34.
ShepardR.N. (1980). Multidimensional scaling, tree-fitting, and clustering. Science, 210, 390–398.
35.
ShepardR.N. (1992). The perceptual organization of colors: An adaptation to regularities in the terrestrial world? InBarkowJ.CosmidesL.ToobyJ., (Eds), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
36.
ShepardR.N.ChipmanS. (1970). Second-order isomorphism of internal representations: Shapes of states. Cognitive Psychology, 1, 1–17.
37.
ShepardR.N.CooperL.A. (1975, September). Representation of colors in normal, blind, and color blind subjects.Paper presented in the symposium Applications of Multidimensional Scaling, at the joint meeting of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association and the Psychometric Society, Chicago.
38.
ShepardR.N.CooperL.A. (1982). Mental images and their transformations.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Brandford Books.
39.
ShepardR.N.KilpatricD.W.CunninghamJ.P. (1975). The internal representation of numbers. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 82–138.
40.
WhiteC.W.LockheadG.R.EvansN.J. (1977). Multidimensional scaling of subjective colors by color-blind observers. Perception & Psychophysics, 21, 522–526.
41.
WishM.CarrollJ.D. (1974). Application of individual differences scaling to studies of human perception and judgment. InCarteretteE.C.FriedmanM.P., (Eds.), Handbook of perception (Vol. 11, pp.449–491). New York: Academic Press.
