The Emergence of Color Cognition from Color Perception

Reporting isomorphism between the perception and cognition of color, this article speculates upon how the two might interrelate and how that relation might be constrained. A pilot study of color perception revealed differences in the perception of color by sex and by eye color of subject. In the present study, we examine results of a triadic sorting task of color terms, finding that for the nine most salient terms in the subjects' color cognitions, the sortings of men and women varied significantly along two of the meaning dimensions revealed in the perceptual experiment. Differences were also found in the cognitions of blue‐eyed and brown‐eyed persons for the same nine terms. We argue that the cognition of color may be governed by two kinds of constraint: one that limits the level of abstractness the perceptual forms can evince, and one (based on connectedness) that governs the mapping of perceptual structures into their cognitive expressions in any language and culture.