Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination

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).

Fig. 1.

The 20 blue colors used in this study are shown at the top of the figure. An example triad of color squares used in this study is shown at the bottom of the figure. Subjects were instructed to pick which one of the two bottom squares matched the color of the top square.

Fig. 2.

Russian speakers' (Left) and English speakers' (Right) reaction times (msec) shown for the no-interference, spatial-interference, and verbal-interference conditions. Both near-color and far-color comparisons are included in these graphs. Error bars represent one SE of the estimate of the two-way interaction between category and interference condition.

Fig. 3.

Category advantage is plotted for Russian speakers (Left) and English speakers (Right) as a function of comparison distance (near color vs. far color) and interference condition (none, spatial, and verbal). Category advantage is calculated as the difference between the average reaction time for within-category trials and that for cross-category trials (msec). Error bars represent one SE of the estimate of the three-way interaction among category, interference condition, and color distance.