Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination

doi:10.1073/pnas.0701644104

Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination

*Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307;
^§Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1769;
^¶Brain Imaging Center, Smith–Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA 94115; and
^‡Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

Communicated by Gordon H. Bower, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, March 7, 2007 (received for review September 22, 2006)

Abstract

English and Russian color terms divide the color spectrum differently. Unlike English, Russian makes an obligatory distinction between lighter blues (“goluboy”) and darker blues (“siniy”). We investigated whether this linguistic difference leads to differences in color discrimination. We tested English and Russian speakers in a speeded color discrimination task using blue stimuli that spanned the siniy/goluboy border. We found that Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two colors when they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian (one siniy and the other goluboy) than when they were from the same linguistic category (both siniy or both goluboy). Moreover, this category advantage was eliminated by a verbal, but not a spatial, dual task. These effects were stronger for difficult discriminations (i.e., when the colors were perceptually close) than for easy discriminations (i.e., when the colors were further apart). English speakers tested on the identical stimuli did not show a category advantage in any of the conditions. These results demonstrate that (i) categories in language affect performance on simple perceptual color tasks and (ii) the effect of language is online (and can be disrupted by verbal interference).

Footnotes

^†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: winawer{at}mit.edu
Author contributions: J.W., N.W., M.C.F., A.R.W., and L.B. designed research; J.W., N.W., M.C.F., and L.W. performed research; J.W., N.W., L.W., and L.B. analyzed data; and J.W. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵ ‖ There is in fact a trend toward a reversal of the normal pattern under verbal interference such that cross-category trials are performed more slowly than within-category trials. Although this is not a significant effect, it is consistent with the reversal in category advantage under verbal interference reported in another work (23) and may suggest an obligatory attempt to make a verbal distinction even when a dual task interferes with such an attempt.
↵ ** This may apply to some, but not necessarily all, perceptual tasks. Evidence from other studies with similar designs suggests that perceptual discriminations that are more difficult (unpublished work) and ones that are carried out in the right visual field (and therefore more strongly in the left hemisphere of the brain, typically associated with language) (23) are more likely to be affected by linguistic processes.