(c) John Dempsey, University of Central Lancashire Using colours.
Using Colours as Therapy
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REPORT Preferences for colours and colour ± emotion combinations in early childhood Marcel R. Zentner University of Geneva, Switzerland Abstract Previous research has shown that, by the age of 3 to 4 years, children rely not only on perceptual similarity but also on shared category or other underlying structures to draw analogies. The present study extends this work by showing that children as young as 3 years old detect consistent relationships between colours and facial expressions of emotions ± two phenomena that share no physical characteristics, violate conventional categories and have no obvious environmental contiguity. Two explanatory hypotheses are put forward: a) learning by convention, which is explored against the standard of adults' and older children's matching patterns, and b) reliance upon a common underlying but perceptually unavailable dimension ± operationalized in terms of emotion and colour preferences in the context of the present study. Both explanatory approaches are discussed and avenues for future work are suggested. While the basic purpose of human colour vision is to discriminate objects, at a more elaborate level this sensory capacity is used to attribute salience and meaning to chromatic stimuli. A prime example is that individuals not only show specific colour preferences but also attribute emotional characteristics to colours in consistent ways from school age on e.g. Guilford & Smith, 1959; Karp & Karp, 1988; Whitfield & Wiltshire, 1990; Boyatzis & Varghese, 1994; Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994; Meerum Terwogt & Hoeksma, 1995). However, with the exception of studies on colour discrimination in infancy Bornstein, 1975; Werner & Wooten, 1979; Adams, 1987), surprisingly little is known about the early development of perceptual attractiveness and emotional connotations of colours. The present research extends previous work back into early childhood. Such an extension raises important issues of both theoretical and practical interest. The most important question to be addressed here is whether young children can detect a relationship between a colour and an emotional expression ± two phenomena that share no physical characteristics, violate conven- tional categories, and have no obvious environmental contiguity. Different research traditions in cognitive development have provided evidence suggesting that the prerequisites for the construction of these relationships may already exist at an early age. First, research on conceptual development in young children has shown that by the age of 3±4 years children rely not only on perceptual similarity but also on shared category or other underlying structures to draw analogies e.g. Brown, 1989; Markman, 1989; Goswami, 1992). This capacity to go beyond the mere appearance of the objects, relating them on some deeper grounds, might be a conceptual prerequisite to appreciating more abstract relationships, such as relating `bright' to `happy'. Further evidence comes from research on metaphor comprehension in young children. One could consider analogies such as `anger is like red' and `sadness is like blue' to be metaphors since they concur with the defining feature of a metaphor as a `similarity between objects and events that violate children's conventional categories' Vosniadou, 1987, p. 873). Although it is generally acknowledged that preschool children have some ability to comprehend metaphors Gardner & Winner, 1986; Vosniadou, 1987), it has also been found that this ability is fragile, especially in relation to metaphors describing psychological phenomena such as emotions Winner, Rosenstiel & Gardner, 1976). More recent work, on the other hand, has suggested that even preschool children do have some basic intuitive Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40 Bd. du Pont d'Arve, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland; e-mail: [email protected] Developmental Science 4:4 2001), pp 389 ± 398 # Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
description
exploring feelings through colour, emotional intelligence
Transcript of Using Colours as Therapy
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