The Sussex Colour Group is currently working on three funded projects, with funding from the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Project ‘CATEGORIES’: The origin and impact of colour categories in language and thought.
Humans can discriminate millions of colours, yet language refers to colour using a number of discrete categories (e.g., red, green, blue). These colour categories are also present in thought (e.g., in colour judgements / memory). There has been considerable multidisciplinary research into the origin of colour categories and how colour categories in thought and language relate. However, major theoretical challenges remain. The 5 year 'CATEGORIES' project, led by Franklin, will tackle these crucial challenges. In our previous research, we have established that infants respond categorically to colour. The first aim of the ‘CATEGORIES’ project is to establish the relationship of these pre-linguistic colour categories to the commonality and variation in the world’s colour lexicons. In order to achieve this, we are conducting a series of sub-projects which draw on a diverse range of methods (e.g., infant testing, computational simulations, psychophysics, cross-cultural fieldwork). The second aim is to resolve the debate about the effect of colour terms on colour perception. It has previously been claimed that speakers of different colour lexicons see colour differently, a proposal which relates to Whorf’s hypothesis (1956) that language influences our perception of the world. We are developing a ‘Neuro-Whorfian’ approach, using neuro-physiological methods to make cross-linguistic comparisons of colour processing. Overall, the project aims to provide new questions, approaches, data and theory to the multidisciplinary field of colour category research. More broadly, the project addresses issues that are fundamental to understanding the complexity of the human mind, such as the interaction of language and thought, and how the brain categorises the visual world.
Funded by an European Research Council, Starting Grant Award (Franklin, PI, €1.48 million), 2012-2017
Project ‘CONSTANCY’: The relationship between colour constancy and colour categorisation.
The question of how colour categories, such as blue and purple, are related to the perception of a multitude of colour shades has become a prime example for central questions concerning the relationship between language, experience, cognition and perception. Some studies point to the possibility that colour categorization is related to colour constancy, that is the ability to recognize the same colour under difference illuminations. In this project, we investigate whether the relationship we found in earlier studies with adult observers also exists in children at the age of colour term acquisition and before. Most importantly, we aim to elucidate through a whole series of studies whether it is rather the perceptual characteristics of colour constancy that determine colour categories, or, vice versa, it is the categories that stabilize the identity of particular colours across changing illumination. The developmental approach is crucial here in that it allows us to establish the primacy of either colour categories or the particular patterns of colour constancy.
Funded by a DAAD Post-doctoral fellowship to Christoph Witzel, 2012-2013
Project ‘ORIGINS’: The origins of colour perception and cognition in infancy
This PhD project aims to investigate the origins of several aspects of colour cognition (colour categories, unique hues and colour associations) by investigating these phenomena in infants. Infants' response to colour is being investigated with behavioural and electrophysiological measures in a series of experiments.
Funded by an ESRC Doctoral studentship to John Maule, 2012-2015