Fascinating article about why people "see" color differently

[kenny]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120427-when-is-a-colour-not-a-colour

Please read the whole BBC article, but hear is a teaser snip...

We do not always agree about colour. Your red might be my pink or orange. Vietnamese and Korean people do not differentiate blue from green – leaves and sky are both coloured xanh in Vietnam. The late English artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman once met a friend on London’s Oxford Street and complimented him on his beautiful yellow coat. His friend replied that he had bought it in Tokyo, where it was not considered yellow at all, but green.

These overlaps and omissions are unnoticeable if they are part of your culture –but they can seem utterly bizarre if they are not.

We should not be too surprised by these cultural differences, though. The visible spectrum is not like a paint colour chart, neatly separated into blocks of distinct hue, but is a continuum in which each colour blends into the next. Why should we expect to agree on where to set the boundaries, or on which colours are the most fundamental? The yellow band, say, is as wide as the cyan band, so why is yellow considered any more ‘basic’ than cyan?

Naming scheme

A new study by physicist Vittorio Loreto at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and his colleagues argues that the naming of colours is not arbitrary. The researchers say that a natural hierarchy of colour terms arises from the interplay between our innate ability to distinguish one hue from another and the complex cultural negotiation out of which language itself appears.

 

[loaded]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

Very interesting, I will read up later, I have thought similar thoughts myself in the past. Incidently, I have been away for a couple of days, struggling to get my hands on bellows (I am not in the US, where they seem more available)

I might buy a couple of extenders, although they won't get me the length you recommended, however, I suspect that I either need the bellows, or higher number of pixels from my relatively low resolution camera body.

All the best,

Paul.

 

[kenny]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

Paul, I responded in your other thread since so people don't have to follow two treads about the same topic.

[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/forum/post3183533.html#p3183533']https://www.pricescope.com/forum/post3183533.html#p3183533[/URL]

 

[RedSpinel]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I just recently ran into a color-blind test on the internet, but I dont remember the name of it, but you could probably find it by Googling 'color blindness test", and you can take the test for free online, and its interesting. They show many different patterns and you have to see whether you can pick out the figure in the picture or not. If you cannot, you might be colorblind.

But also, some people can actually see a bit of the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, where others cant.

Personally, I can see radio waves and microwaves, because when I had my bionic eyes installed, I paid extra for those options, plus the night vision package as well!

 

[kenny]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I just recently ran into a color-blind test on the internet, but I dont remember the name of it, but you could probably find it by Googling 'color blindness test", and you can take the test for free online, and its interesting. They show many different patterns and you have to see whether you can pick out the figure in the picture or not. If you cannot, you might be colorblind.

But also, some people can actually see a bit of the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, where others cant.

Personally, I can see radio waves and microwaves, because when I had my bionic eyes installed, I paid extra for those options, plus the night vision package as well!

Oh Yeah!?!
Well, I paid extra to be able to see when I'm being bamboozled.

 

[chrono]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

Kenny,
Thank you for the article. It is true that in other cultures, colour is described differently. As an example, in my native tongue, a bruise is transliterated as black green while it is described as blue black in English. Not sure why but I see both blue and green in bruises as it changes over time. I agree that brown isn't a spectral colour (or hue). It is really a variant of orange (dark yellow or dark brown).

 

[partgypsy]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

What I learned in my perception class, is that people do label or identify certain primary colors pretty consistently, and this is across cultures. As this article describes, there are areas of high concordance of color identification (i.e. a "red" is a "red") and areas where across individuals and across languages/cultures there is low concordance. Since the areas of high concordance readily overlaps with the primary visual colors coded (red, green, blue) I'm sure it is related to some kind of physiological or perceptual process. Typically those areas people can make more fine distinctions between differences of hues.

Also regardless of culture, there seems to be a pretty consistent pattern of number of color names, what those color names are, so that they can be graphed by a flow chart. So if a culture has only 2 color names one would be sure they code for light and dark, while if thee are 4 colors one would be able to predict which colors would be represented. This again shows that there are pretty strong perceptual limits on naming of colors, of which cultural differences are overlain.
Blue/green, yellow-green, called yellow or green depending on culture, again would be areas of low concordance where it is expected to find individual and cultural differences.

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/44/16608.full

 

[kenny]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I wonder whether languages originating in rain forests have more names for their many different shades of green.
I heard eskimos have many words for the many types of snow and French have more words for love.

 

[iLander]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

This is probably covered in the article (at work, can't read all through just now) but what about global location?

I have noticed a difference in gem color (and perception) based on a person's location on the globe (which corresponds to how light rays bend around the earth).

Here's the story; I purchased a stone from Barry Bridgestock, who is almost 10 degrees to my north, in terms of latitude. The stone was a color change sapphire, which Barry stated as having a purple tint outside. It arrived and I could never get it to show a purple tint, except for literally one hour in the evening, near sunset. The rest of the time it was brown. Barry couldn't see the brown! Between the two of us, it was a like we talking about two different stones!

I thought of this, and the way people talk about "the light" on Cape Cod (which is fairly yellow, even in the middle of the day), when I read your post. I also remembered the amazing light change when you drive from up north down into Florida; it's like someone switched on the high beams!

Do they mention global location and the bending of the sun's rays in the article?

 

[LD]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I totally agree iLander. I have gems that look completely different in lighting where I live for most of the year and then change completely when I'm in the Mediteranean. Natural lighting most definitely plays a part in how colours appear.

Also, your age plays a part (fading eyesight), if you're tired or feeling refreshed etc etc. There are many many variables.

Kenny - a year or so ago there was a glut of threads on this topic - some incredibly fascinating and some with tests you could do at home to test how you perceive colour.

 

[partgypsy]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

**edited by moderator to remove unapproved post**

Sorry! What I mean by concordance, is basically agreement across viewers. You take 100 people and you have them label color chips. looking across the color spectrum there are areas where everyone agrees what color they are, and they are centered typically around what we call primary or pure colors. However there is less agreement across perceivers for boundary colors as well as what we would perceive as secondary colors (the ones that look "muddy" to us).

Studies have found that there is a heavy biological basis on this concordance, because you see the same pattern of concordance in difference language users. Of course if you only have 2 different color terms it's going to look different, but in general for any language that has multiple color names. Also, you can teach a language user color names, and they will be able to discriminate faster and more accurately those labels that go with those pure color terms (they can accurately tell you what "red" is if you teach them the color red, but will be less accurate with chartreuse for example). I find the field of perception interesting, so I know more than is useful for this topic! What I thought was really interesting when you split up the pure color spectrum into individual wavelengths, you will see "colors" or hues that are muddy or brown looking. That I did not expect.

 

[kenny]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

When AGL, Gübelin or GIA interviews employees for color grading jobs I assume they test their proficiency in color identification.
I wonder if cultural background affects test results. (Let's not even get into the discriminatory legal aspect.)
IOW, if a person from culture X could train and get all the best gemological education available, yet still fail to see color "properly".
Or can this cultural "bias" be overcome with well-designed training.
Is it nature or nurture?

Frankly, this all brings into question whether there even IS a such thing as "proper" color identification.
As an owner of fancy colored diamonds, where a ton of money can depend on subtle color differences, this subject is of great interest to me.

 

[sapphirering]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I wonder whether languages originating in rain forests have more names for their many different shades of green.
I heard eskimos have many words for the many types of snow and French have more words for love.

Kenny, here's a link to an article in the New Yorker about an Amazonian tribe called Piraha: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto... They have no fixed vocabularies for colors in their language. I thought it was a fascinating read.

 

[partgypsy]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

When AGL, Gübelin or GIA interviews employees for color grading jobs I assume they test their proficiency in color identification.
I wonder if cultural background affects test results. (Let's not even get into the discriminatory legal aspect.)
IOW, if a person from culture X could train and get all the best gemological education available, yet still fail to see color "properly".
Or can this cultural "bias" be overcome with well-designed training.
Is it nature or nurture?

Frankly, this all brings into question whether there even IS a such thing as "proper" color identification.
As an owner of fancy colored diamonds, where a ton of money can depend on subtle color differences, this subject is of great interest to me.

It is far easier to train people in color perception than it is in say taste or smell. In both cases it is critical to have standards to constantly train against. Also color perception is highly tied with context (as others were saying how light or dark or yellow or gray the light surroundings are). This is probably a bigger factor in descriptions differing than cultural. However I can imagine there are cultural differences. Someone who grew up labeling this shade of red as "pink" while you label it red, are going to have communication problems. I don't think of them as "perceiving" the colors differently, simply that they are using different color terms for the same color or hue.

 

[partgypsy]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

I'm coming from a perceptual psychology background, and it would be interesting to see how this is applied for basically "industrial" purposes such as color labeling for diamonds. Myself when viewing colored diamonds on the web, have very little ability in being able to predict how a diamond's color would be labeled. I don't know if that has to do with inexperience/unfamiliarity with their grading, not being able to see the diamond in person or a combination. For example there are many brown diamonds that to me, have a pink hue. sometimes it's mentioned, sometimes it's not. I don't know if it is "in my head" or not. Similarly, my daughter who has dark blonde hair, in person looks like dark blonde hair. but when she is photographed, her hair sometimes has a red tint to it. Where is that tint coming from?

 

[Arkteia]

Re: Fascinating article about why people "see" color differe

This is the historical aspect of one color...

In my native language "purple" usually means intense-red, like clouds at sunset. In English, "purple" has such a wide variety of meanings, that I am at a loss when someone describes the color of a stone as "purple". (You never know what you are going to see when you open up the package. Most often than not, it is going to be something violetish).

This article in wiki shows different hues and shades that are all described as "purple"; but please pay attention to the robe of the Emperor Justinian at the old Bysantine mosaic...(this is the "royal purple", or the "Tyrian purple" which comes from the color of the molluscus. Phoenicians were dyeing robes into this color and it was very expensive.) It looks more red than violet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple

Apparently, the dyeing had two stages. During the first of them, the robes were colored in red, the second stage gave the robes more violetish, magenta, hue. But it still looks red at the mosaic, and not violet at all.