Preschooler Colors

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The Relationship between Color Naming and Color Recognition Abilities of PreschoolersAuthor(s): Meredith M. Kimball and Philip S. DaleReviewed work(s):Source: Child Development, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 972-980Published by: Blackwell Publishingon behalf of the Society for Research in Child DevelopmentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1127647.

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THE RELATIONSHIP ETWEENCOLORNAMINGAND COLOR RECOGNITIONABILITIESOF PRESCHOOLERSMEREDITH . KIMBALL

University of British ColumbiaPHILIP . DALE

University of Washington

KIMBALL, MEREDITH M., and DALE, PHILIP S. The RelationshipbetweenColor Naming and Color Recognition Abilities of Preschoolers. CHILD DE-VELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 972-980. The effect of language on memory wastested using 33 4-year-old children. Their ability to name and remembercolors was measured.Recognitionaccuracywas significantlyrelated to thechildren'sability to name colors. However, chronological age, mental age,and IQ were significant confounding factors in the relationshipbetweennamingabilityand/or use and recognitionaccuracy.Therewas a significanttendency on the part of all the children to use their own color name cate-goriesto inhibitextracategorical esponseswhen making recognitionchoices.The results are discussedin relationshipto productionand mediation defi-ciency, and in termsof the Whorfianhypothesis.

The Whorfian hypothesis (1957) argues that one's experience of theworld is determined by the language he speaks. Evidence for the Whorfianhypothesis has not been conclusive, and the hypothesis has been subjectedto several interpretations. McNiell (1965) has described three possibleversions of the Whorfian hypothesis. The strong version states that the cate-

This study was completed while both authors were at the University ofMichigan. The authors wish to express appreciationto the staff of the UniversityNursery School and Perry Nursery School for their cooperation. Author Kimball'saddress: Departmentof Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver8,BritishColumbia,Canada.[ChildDevelopment, 972, 43, 972-980.@ 1972by the Society or Research n ChildDevelop-ment,Inc. All rightsreserved.]


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MEREDITH. KIMBALLND PHILIP. DALE

gories and structures of language determine thought and that this causalrelationship is not dependent upon the production of language by the in-dividual. The weak version of the Whorfian hypothesis differs from thestrong in both point of influence and in the role of language production.Language, according to the weak version, can influence perception, butonly when the relevant linguistic labels are actually produced. The weakestversion holds that, if information is to be stored over time, it is stored via alinguistic code and therefore bears the imprint of the linguistic code. Accord-ing to the three versions, language touches cognition at one of three points-thought, perception, or memory.Most of the evidence for the strong version has been anecdotal (Lenne-berg 1953). Evidence for the weak version has been ambiguous (Carroll &Casagrande 1958; Lenneberg 1953; Maclay 1958). Evidence for the weakestversion has been somewhat clearer. Brown and Lenneberg (1954) foundthat codability of a color was related to recognition accuracy for adults.Using communication accuracy as a measure of color nameability, Lantz andStreffle (1964) found a positive relationship between communication accu-racy and recognition accuracy with adult subjects. Using 6-year-old deaf andhearing children, Lantz and Lenneberg (1966) found that the deaf chil-dren did significantly worse on a recognition task, again indicating theimportance of language for the coding of information over time.The present study was designed as a further test of the weakest formof the Whorfian hypothesis. If a language system is important for memory,there must be some point in development when the lack of such asystem and its effects can be demonstrated in normal children. It was de-cided to look at the color-naming system in young children (4-year-olds)to see if a relationship held between the ability to name colors and/or thetendency to use available color names, and recognition accuracy. Since in-telligence, mental age, and/or chronological age are also often relate&tomemory capacity and to language ability in young children, these factorswere also examined in relationship to naming and recognition ability.METHOD

Subjects.-Thirty-three middle-class children (11 boys and 22 girls),between the ages of 3-5 and 5-2 from two different nursery schools served assubjects. Since all of the children could not complete the task, it was neces-sary to test more than 33 children in order to obtain complete data from 33.All the children tested completed the first session (naming task) but severalfound the second session (recognition task) too difficult and were unable orunwilling to finish it.Stimulus materials.-Every sixth color chip of the Farnsworth-Munsellcolor series (i.e., numbers 1, 7, 13, 19, . . . , 79) was chosen to construct astimulus set of 14 colors. Different colors (pink through purple) are repre-

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CHILDDEVELOPMENTsented in the Farnsworth-Munsell series, and the series is circular so thatend points are not available to be used as anchors. The colors are equal inbrightness and saturation but different in hue. There are two disadvantagesinvolved in using these colors with young Ss. The colors are very unsaturated(there is not a good example of red, for instance) and small (I inch in di-ameter). Both of these factors tend to make the colors uninteresting to smallchildren. The chips were covered with a clear plastic material and mountedin black plastic caps. One complete set of the chips was presented in acircular array on a white wooden board, but the chips not fastened to theboard. A second set was used for stimulus presentation. The Farnsworth-Munsell colors were used because they have been shown to be perceptuallyequidistant for adults (Dale 1969; Farnsworth 1943), and thus the mag-nitude of error can be scored.

Procedure.-Each S was seen individually in either two or three ses-sions. The first two sessions were at least 2 or 3 days apart; the second andthird were either done at the same time or a few days apart depending onthe attention span of the S.In the first session the S was seated at a table and shown all 14 colors

on the white board. Then the colors were removed and the child was shownone color at a time and asked, Does this color have a name? What do youcall this color? The series of 14 colors was presented twice, both times inrandom order. Each name the S gave was recorded verbatim, includingmodifiers such as light, dark, -ish (as in greenish), etc.

In the second session (2-7 days later) the S was required to remembercolors over time and to find a color just like the one he had seen previously.In order to be certain that the S understood just like, two matching trialswere given first. Two colors were chosen randomly for these trials. Thesetwo trials were corrected. The S was not used if he matched incorrectly onboth trials. The S was next introduced to a recognition task through twopractice recognition trials. First the display of 14 colors was covered andit was explained that this was part of the game. Then the child was showna color for 5 seconds and instructed to look at it carefully. The E then hidthe color in her hand for 5 seconds, after which the cover was removed andthe S instructed to find a color just like the one in the E's hand. Each ofthe 14 colors was presented once during the regular recognition trials, andthe order of presentation was random. If the S spontaneously named thecolors during this session, the names he used were recorded verbatim. Noneof the recognition trials was corrected.If recent individual mental age measures (Stanford-Binet) were avail-able for the Ss in the school records, the third session was omitted. The Ssfor whom this information was not available were given the Peabody Pic-ture Vocabulary Test. This test was administered after the recognition trialsif the S was still attentive; if not, it was given a few days later.974


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RESULTSNaming ability and recognitionaccuracy.-Each recognition responsewas scored in terms of both direction and distance of error from the correct

response. In computing average error scores, the mean absolute error wasnot used because the distribution of errors was skewed by a few high meanabsolute error scores. This in turn led to unequal variances in subgroups.This was considered a problem since the division of Ss into various sub-groups had to be made on the basis of the Ss' test behavior, which in allcases led to an unequal number of Ss in the groups being compared. In orderto remove the skewed nature of this distribution, the error score for eachS was computed as the logarithm of the variance of the algebraic errors(1 + loglo [variance of the algebraic errors]). All error scores are reportedin log units.

In order to test the hypothesis that children who name colors are ableto recognize them more accurately, it was necessary to divide the Ss into agroup of namers (N) and a group of nonnamers (NN). Namers were definedas Ss who used four or more color names consistently in both of the promptednaming trials (one naming trial consisted of naming each of the 14 colorsonce). Consistent color naming was operationally defined as using each colorname for only one continuous segment of the color array. If a child usedblue for colors 4, 5, 6, and 7 and green for 8, 9, and 10, he namedconsistently, while if he used blue to label colors 4, 5, 7, and 8 and

green for colors 6, 9, and 10, he named inconsistently. There were 19 Ss(five boys and 14 girls) in the N group and 14 (six boys and eight girls)in the NN group. Namers used an average of 5.6 different color names witha range of four to nine different names used. Nonnamers used an average of4.4 different color names with a range of one to nine different names used.Of the 14 NN Ss, 10 failed to name consistently, two used fewer than fourcolor names, and 2 both used fewer than four color names and failed toname consistently. The average error for the N group was 1.15, and theaverage error for the NN group was 1.70. Another question of interest wasthe relationship between spontaneous naming of the colors during the recog-nition trials (the S was not asked to name the colors at this time) andrecognition accuracy. The average error of the 25 (10 boys and 15 girls)spontaneous namers (S) was 1.34, and the average error of the eight (oneboy and seven girls) nonspontaneous namers (NS) was 1.53.Not all children who spontaneously named met the naming criterionand not all children who met the naming criterion, spontaneously named.Separating the Ss on the two dimensions gives four groups: (1) spontaneousnamers (S,N), N = 16 (five boys and 11 girls); (2) spontaneous, non-namers (S,NN), N = 9 (five boys and four girls); (3) nonspontaneous,namers (NS,N) , N = 3 (no boys and three girls); and (4) nonspontaneous,

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CHILDDEVELOPMENTTABLE 1

AVERAGERROR, HRONOLOGICALGE,MENTALAGE,AND NTELLIGENCEQUOTIENTORSUBJECTSN DIFFERENT AMINGGROUPSS, N S,NN NS,N NS, NN

Averageerror......... 1.19 1.55 0.95 1.84(16)a (9) (3) (5)AverageCA (in mos.) . 56.1 55.3 54.7 52.0(16) (9) (3) (5)AverageMA (in mos.) . 71.1 63.5 78.3 69.7(14) (8) (3) (3)Average IQ ........... 128 116 114 134(14) (8) (3) (3)

a Number of subjects in each cell.

nonnamers (NS,NN), N = 5 (one boy and four girls). The recognitionaccuracy data for the four groups are presented in table 1. To test for theeffect of naming ability and spontaneous naming, a two-way analysis ofvariance was performed (naming x spontaneous naming). The naming ef-fect was significant, F(1,29) = 18.55, p < .01, as predicted. However, thespontaneous naming effect, F(1,29) = 2.0, p > .05, and the interaction,F(1,29) = 3.45, p > .05, were not significant.In considering the influence of verbal labels on memory, it was possibleto look in more detail at this relationship. In order to do this, average cate-gory size (inverse of the number of different color names used) for each Swas compared with his average error. If color naming influences recognition,it would be predicted that the smaller the average category size, the smallerthe average error. This prediction was supported since the correlation be-tween error and average category size for the 19 N children was .57, p < .01.

The effects of age and intelligence.-In addition to the tendency and/orability to use color labels, other factors influence memory span in very youngchildren, and hence potentially influence recognition accuracy. Three of themost commonly acknowledged factors are chronological age (CA), mentalage (MA), and intelligence (IQ). In order to study CA, MA, and IQ aspossible confounding factors, a two-way analysis of covariance (naming Xspontaneous naming) was used. Neither the main effects nor the interactionswere significant for any of the three factors. Thus CA, MA, and IQ had asignificant confounding effect on the relationship between naming ability anderror.Pattern of recognition responses.-The finding that namers are signifi-cantly more accurate on a recognition task than nonnamers gives some in-formation about the effect of verbal labels on a memory task, that is, havingconsistent color names aids the memory and increases recognition accuracy.However, a finer measure (inhibition of extracategorical responses or d) ofthe effect of verbal labels on this memory task is possible (Dale 1969). This976


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MEREDITH. KIMBALLND PHILIP. DALEmeasure consists of the number of recognition responses which come fromthe same naming class as the recognition stimulus color. Even if a child'srecognition responses are not influenced by his verbal labels, a certain num-ber of such responses can be expected since the most frequent errors involvecolors close to the stimulus color and these same colors are also most likelyto have the same name as the stimulus color. It is possible to compute, foreach set of names given by each child, the expected number of such re-sponses, given that verbal labels have no part in determining recognition re-sponses. The expected value for each set of 14 names given by each childrepresents the number of responses that are to be expected from the samenaming class as the stimulus if the child's set of color names does not influ-ence his recognition responses. Subtracting the expected number of suchresponses from the observed number yields a d score for each set of namesgiven by each child. If verbal labels do not influence recognition responses,then the d scores should, with equal frequency, be positive or negative. How-ever, if there is a direct influence of verbal labels, then a disproportionatenumber of d scores should be positive. The d measures were derived in thesame way for both consistent and inconsistent namers.Each S named the set of 14 colors at least twice (and three times if henamed spontaneously during the recognition task), receiving either two orthree d scores. The two d scores from the prompted naming trials were aver-aged, so that each S had one d' score (d' = [d1 + dj]/2) for the twoprompted naming trials. Spontaneous namers had a third score (d3) basedon the names used during the recognition session.If the overall tendency to inhibit extracategorical recognition responsesexisted, a significant number of the d scores would be positive. Using a signtest, this hypothesis was confirmed whether for dI (z = 3.3, p < .01), d2(z = 2.7, p < .01), d3 (z = 4.94, p < .01), or d' (z = 3.6, p < .01).

When the d' scores of the NN group were compared with those of theN group, by a Mann-Whitney U test, the difference was significant at the.05 level (two-tailed) in the opposite direction from that expected, that is,the NN group had a larger d' measure than the N group. However, the samecomparison was not significant when the S group was compared to the NSgroup (Mann-Whitney, two-tailed).It would be expected for the S group that their naming behavior wouldaffect their recognition responses more, the closer the naming was in time tothe actual recognition choices. Thus it was expected that their d3 scoreswould be even larger (further from chance than their d' scores). This hypoth-esis was confirmed (p < .01) by using either a sign test or a Wilcoxen testfor two matched samples.In conclusion, forming categories of color names did seem to influencerecognition behavior; and the closer in time the formation of the color cate-gory, the greater was the tendency for the names to affect the recognitionresponses through inhibition of extracategorical responses.

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DISCUSSIONThe Whorfian hypotheses.-The finding that children who had four ormore consistent color names available remembered colors more accurately

supported the weakest form of the Whorfian hypothesis and was consistentwith Lantz and Lenneberg's (1966) finding that 6-year-old hearing childrenremembered colors significantly better than 6-year-old deaf children who hadno language system. A closer look at the relationship between naming andrecognition accuracy was given by the correlation between average categorysize (inverse of the number of different color names used) and error for thechildren who met the minimum naming criterion. This relationship was sig-nificant (r = .57), adding support to the hypothesis of the relationshipbetween verbal labeling. and memory.Production and mediational deficiency.-The relationship in bothmethod and results between this research and the research of Flavell, Beach,and Chinsky (1966) and Keeney, Cannizzo, and Flavell (1967) on produc-tion deficiency warrants some comment. Flavell has argued that the media-tional deficiency hypothesis (Reese 1962) should actually be viewed as twoseparate hypotheses. The first one (mediational deficiency) is that the childproduces the verbal label, but the verbalizations fail, for some reason, to me-diate. The second one (production deficiency) states that the child tends notto produce the proper verbal labels when the situation calls for them, al-though he knows the words involved, that is, he can produce and use themin some situations.

In comparing the Flavell and Keeney studies with this one, the firstproblem is whether the spontaneous namers in the present study were re-hearsing in the same sense as subjects rehearsed in the Flavell and Keeneystudies. The spontaneous naming observed here and the rehearsal describedin the Flavell studies were different in three important ways: (1) the sub-jects who spontaneously named in the present study did so once, aloud, anddid not repeat the color name or even appear to whisper it repeatedly duringthe delay period, while the subjects who rehearsed in the Flavell and Keeneystudies most often did so in a whisper or very low voice and repeated thelabel more than once; and (2) 25 of the 33 subjects (4-year-olds) spon-taneously named the colors, while only two of the 20 kindergarten childrenin the Flavell et al. (1966) study rehearsed; and (3) spontaneous namingwas not related to recognition accuracy, while Flavell et al. (1966) foundthat spontaneous namers had significantly better recall.One possible explanation of the above differences is that spontaneousnaming was unrelated to rehearsal but occurred because giving names aloudhad been the proper response a few days before in exactly the same situation.Thus the prompted naming facilitated the spontaneous naming, but spon-taneous naming was not related in any simple way to any rehearsal (covert978


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MEREDITH. KIMBALLND PHILIP. DALEor overt) that did occur. This explanation accounts for the discrepanciesnoted above. While it also accounts for the finding that S subjects were notsignificantly more accurate, it does not account for the finding that the Ssubjects' recognition responses were more closely related to,the spontaneouslygiven labels than to the prompted labels given several days before (d3 > d',p < .01).Dale (1969), using a matching as well as a recognition task, came tothe conclusion that both spontaneous namers and nonspontaneous namersproduced the mediator, but the NS group failed to rehearse the verbal labelover the delay period in the recognition task. He found that all subjectsshowed a significantly greater than chance d measure in a matching task(i.e., produced and used a color label as a mediator), but in the recognitiontask, only the S group had d scores significantly greater than chance. Thusin the recognition task, while both S and NS subjects produced the potentialmediator, the NS group failed to rehearse it and thus forgot it over the delayperiod.This argument, however, depends upon the absence of an inhibition ofextracategorical recognition responses in the NS group, and this absencewas not found in the present study. Indeed, both the S and NS groupsshowed a significant tendency to inhibit extracategorical responses and thedifference in the d' measure between the two groups was not significant.Thus, in this study, both S and NS subjects behaved on the recognition taskas if the mediator were being used in the selection of the color.The results of the present study suggest that availability of a consistentset of color labels is related more closely to recognition accuracy than is thespontaneous production of labels in a color recognition task. Thus if a childdoes not have a consistent set of color names, it does him no good to producethe color labels he does have in a recognition task.

REFERENCESBrown, R., & Lenneberg, E. H. A study in language and cognition. Journal ofAbnormal and Social Psychology, 1954, 49, 454-462.Carroll,J. B., & Casagrande, J. B. The function of language classifications n be-havior. In E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Read-ings in social psychology. New York: Holt, 1958.Dale, P. S. Color naming, matching and recognition by preschoolers. Child De-

velopment, 1969, 40, 1135-1144.Farnsworth,D. The Farnsworth-Munsell100 hue and dichotomous test for colorvision. Journalof the Optical Society of America, 1943, 33, 568-576.Flavell, J. H.; Beach, D. R.; & Chinsky, J. H. Spontaneous and induced verbalrehearsal in a memory task as a function of age. Child Development, 1966,37, 283-299.Keeney, T. J.; Cannizzo, S. R.; & Flavell, J. H. Spontaneous and induced verbalrehearsalin a recall task. Child Development, 1967, 38, 953-966.

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CHILDDEVELOPMENTLantz, D., & Lenneberg, E. H. Verbal communicationand color memory in deafand hearing children. Child Development, 1966, 37, 765-779.Lantz, D., & Streffle,V. Language and cognition revisited. Journal of Abnormaland Social Psychology, 1964, 69, 472-481.Lenneberg, E. H. Cognition in ethnolinguistics.Language, 1953, 29, 463-471.Maclay, H. An experimentalstudy of language and non-linguisticbehavior. South-western Journal of Anthropology, 1958, 14, 220-229.McNiell, D. Anthropological inguistics. Unpublished paper, University of Michi-gan, 1965.Reese, H. W. Verbal mediation as a function of age level. Psychological Bulletin,1962, 59, 502-509.Whorf, B. L. Science and linguistics. In J. B. Carroll (Ed.), Language, thought,and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, Mass.:M.I.T. Press, 1957.

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