Colour blindness and its contribution to colour vocabulary
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2014-10-22
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Although often studied from a universalist perspective, colour terminology shows cross-linguistic variation. Several causes have been put forward for these differences, including environmental and cultural factors. The current study aims to further investigate the contribution of physiology to colour naming by assessing the relation between colour blindness and colour terminology and the possible mechanisms underlying such a relation. We collated a database of worldwide colour blindness incidence, UV-B irradiance and linguistic information in order to replicate a previous geographical review demonstrating that Daltonism (red-green colour blindness) was related to latitude and that a distinction between the terms for 'green' and 'blue' was correlated with Daltonism incidence (Brown and Lindsey, 2004). We extended previous work by performing regression analyses and a mediation analysis assessing the contribution of UV-B irradiance to colour vocabulary. We found that previous results stood up in a different, partly overlapping database using different statistica! models and that UV-B plays a significant role in the relation between geographical location and colour blindness. Together, the studies suggest human physiology as a likely contributor to colour vocabulary.
Description
Citation
Faculty
Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen