EAPSI: A Developmental Analysis Across Cultures: Asymmetries in Blue-Yellow Color Perception in Infants and Adults

Emery Kara J, Reno NV

Investigators

Abstract

Individuals can vary widely in their experience of color. Whether these differences are more closely tied to innate differences in the brain or to experience and learning remains actively debated. Recent studies in adults show systematic biases in the perception of blues and yellows and also striking differences in how they perceive these colors in images. This project will use behavioral measurements to examine whether these perceptual differences are also present in infants, and explore the potential role of development and experience in color perception. The research will be conducted at Chuo University in Japan in collaboration with Dr. Masami Yamaguchi, a noted expert in infant perception. With the paradigms designed in Japan, data will also be collected in the United States to explore cross-cultural factors. The results of this project will help reveal how both visual sensitivity and color appearance are shaped by experience and the timescales of these effects. Human observers show a reduced sensitivity to blue and yellow compared to other hues. This sensitivity bias is postulated to represent an adaptation to the natural environment, which varies predominantly in blue and yellow. Individuals also show ?higher-order? differences in how they experience blue and yellow, with the bluish tints more likely to be attributed to the lighting than the object. This may again reflect a learned property of the world (e.g. that shadows tend to be bluish). Little is known about how these effects develop, and this project will explore this development by testing for parallel color biases in infants. At Dr. Masami Yamaguchi's lab, preferential looking techniques are used to investigate the color perception of infants, and this project will use this technique to evaluate color sensitivity and appearance in infant observers. Results from infants and adults in the United States and Japan will be compared to inform whether the blue-yellow axis asymmetry is also influenced by the observer?s specific visual environment. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.