Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception

TLDR

It is now established that native language affects one's perception of the world. The study seeks to determine whether language effects on perception arise from conscious evaluation or from fundamental perceptual differences. Brain potentials reveal that Greek speakers, who have distinct terms for light and dark blue, discriminate these colors more accurately and quickly than English speakers. The visual mismatch negativity was larger for blue than green deviant stimuli in Greek speakers but similar for both colors in English speakers, demonstrating an implicit effect of language‑specific terminology on preattentive color perception.

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.