The Biological Basis of a Universal Constraint on Color Naming: Cone Contrasts and the Two-Way Categorization of Colors

Youping Xiao, Christopher Kavanau, Lauren Bertin and Ehud Kaplan

PLOS ONE, 2011, vol. 6, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: Many studies have provided evidence for the existence of universal constraints on color categorization or naming in various languages, but the biological basis of these constraints is unknown. A recent study of the pattern of color categorization across numerous languages has suggested that these patterns tend to avoid straddling a region in color space at or near the border between the English composite categories of “warm” and “cool”. This fault line in color space represents a fundamental constraint on color naming. Here we report that the two-way categorization along the fault line is correlated with the sign of the L- versus M-cone contrast of a stimulus color. Moreover, we found that the sign of the L-M cone contrast also accounted for the two-way clustering of the spatially distributed neural responses in small regions of the macaque primary visual cortex, visualized with optical imaging. These small regions correspond to the hue maps, where our previous study found a spatially organized representation of stimulus hue. Altogether, these results establish a direct link between a universal constraint on color naming and the cone-specific information that is represented in the primate early visual system.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0024994 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 24994&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0024994

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024994

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().