Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception
(2009) In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106(11). p.4567-4570- Abstract
- It is now established that native language affects one's perception of the world. However, it is unknown whether this effect is merely driven by conscious, language-based evaluation of the environment or whether it reflects fundamental differences in perceptual processing between individuals speaking different languages. Using brain potentials, we demonstrate that the existence in Greek of 2 color terms—ghalazio and ble—distinguishing light and dark blue leads to greater and faster perceptual discrimination of these colors in native speakers of Greek than in native speakers of English. The visual mismatch negativity, an index of automatic and preattentive change detection, was similar for blue and green deviant stimuli during a color... (More)
- It is now established that native language affects one's perception of the world. However, it is unknown whether this effect is merely driven by conscious, language-based evaluation of the environment or whether it reflects fundamental differences in perceptual processing between individuals speaking different languages. Using brain potentials, we demonstrate that the existence in Greek of 2 color terms—ghalazio and ble—distinguishing light and dark blue leads to greater and faster perceptual discrimination of these colors in native speakers of Greek than in native speakers of English. The visual mismatch negativity, an index of automatic and preattentive change detection, was similar for blue and green deviant stimuli during a color oddball detection task in English participants, but it was significantly larger for blue than green deviant stimuli in native speakers of Greek. These findings establish an implicit effect of language-specific terminology on human color perception. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/d8747534-ac69-4aaa-a8ea-87d865e7328b
- author
- Thierry, Guillaume ; Athanasopoulos, Panos LU ; Wiggett, Alison ; Dering, Benjamin and Kuipers, Jan Rouke
- publishing date
- 2009
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- cognition, cultural differences, event-related potentials, linguistic relativity, visual mismatch negativity
- in
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- volume
- 106
- issue
- 11
- pages
- 4 pages
- publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:63149129198
- ISSN
- 1091-6490
- DOI
- 10.1073/pnas.0811155106
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- d8747534-ac69-4aaa-a8ea-87d865e7328b
- date added to LUP
- 2024-09-19 11:22:46
- date last changed
- 2024-09-26 10:18:50
@article{d8747534-ac69-4aaa-a8ea-87d865e7328b,
abstract = {{It is now established that native language affects one's perception of the world. However, it is unknown whether this effect is merely driven by conscious, language-based evaluation of the environment or whether it reflects fundamental differences in perceptual processing between individuals speaking different languages. Using brain potentials, we demonstrate that the existence in Greek of 2 color terms—ghalazio and ble—distinguishing light and dark blue leads to greater and faster perceptual discrimination of these colors in native speakers of Greek than in native speakers of English. The visual mismatch negativity, an index of automatic and preattentive change detection, was similar for blue and green deviant stimuli during a color oddball detection task in English participants, but it was significantly larger for blue than green deviant stimuli in native speakers of Greek. These findings establish an implicit effect of language-specific terminology on human color perception.}},
author = {{Thierry, Guillaume and Athanasopoulos, Panos and Wiggett, Alison and Dering, Benjamin and Kuipers, Jan Rouke}},
issn = {{1091-6490}},
keywords = {{cognition; cultural differences; event-related potentials; linguistic relativity; visual mismatch negativity}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{11}},
pages = {{4567--4570}},
publisher = {{National Academy of Sciences}},
series = {{Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}},
title = {{Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0811155106}},
doi = {{10.1073/pnas.0811155106}},
volume = {{106}},
year = {{2009}},
}