Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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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 -