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Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

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Standard

Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. / Thierry, Guillaume; Athanasopoulos, Panos; Wiggett, Alison et al.
In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 106, No. 11, 17.03.2009, p. 4567-4570.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Harvard

Thierry, G, Athanasopoulos, P, Wiggett, A, Dering, B & Kuipers, J-R 2009, 'Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 106, no. 11, pp. 4567-4570. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0811155106

APA

Thierry, G., Athanasopoulos, P., Wiggett, A., Dering, B., & Kuipers, J.-R. (2009). Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(11), 4567-4570. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0811155106

Vancouver

Thierry G, Athanasopoulos P, Wiggett A, Dering B, Kuipers JR. Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009 Mar 17;106(11):4567-4570. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0811155106

Author

Thierry, Guillaume ; Athanasopoulos, Panos ; Wiggett, Alison et al. / Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009 ; Vol. 106, No. 11. pp. 4567-4570.

Bibtex

@article{a4c7a642eaf94a9182b93506389ef610,
title = "Unconscious effects 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.",
keywords = "cognition, cultural differences, event-related potentials, linguistic relativity, visual mismatch negativity",
author = "Guillaume Thierry and Panos Athanasopoulos and Alison Wiggett and Benjamin Dering and Jan-Rouke Kuipers",
year = "2009",
month = mar,
day = "17",
doi = "10.1073/pnas.0811155106",
language = "English",
volume = "106",
pages = "4567--4570",
journal = "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America",
issn = "0027-8424",
publisher = "National Academy of Sciences",
number = "11",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception

AU - Thierry, Guillaume

AU - Athanasopoulos, Panos

AU - Wiggett, Alison

AU - Dering, Benjamin

AU - Kuipers, Jan-Rouke

PY - 2009/3/17

Y1 - 2009/3/17

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - cognition

KW - cultural differences

KW - event-related potentials

KW - linguistic relativity

KW - visual mismatch negativity

U2 - 10.1073/pnas.0811155106

DO - 10.1073/pnas.0811155106

M3 - Journal article

VL - 106

SP - 4567

EP - 4570

JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

SN - 0027-8424

IS - 11

ER -