People often misrecognize objects that are similar to those they have previously encountered. These mnemonic discrimination errors are attributed to shared memory representations (gist) typically characterized in terms of meaning. In two experiments, we investigated multiple semantic and perceptual relations that may contribute: at the concept…

Although it has been established that human beings process concrete and abstract words differently, it is still a matter of debate what factors contribute to this difference. Since concrete concepts are closely tied to sensory perception, perceptual experience seems to play an important role in their processing. The present study investigated the…

It has been shown that the left and right cerebral hemispheres (LH and RH) respectively process qualitative or "categorical" spatial relations and metric or "coordinate" spatial relations. However, categorical spatial information could be thought as divided into two types: semantically-coded and visuospatially-coded categorical information. We…

Diminished episodic memory and diminished use of semantic information to aid recall by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are both thought to result from diminished relational binding of elements of complex stimuli. To test this hypothesis, we asked high-functioning adults with ASD and typical comparison participants to study grids in…

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that,…

We present data indicating that visual awareness for a basic perceptual feature (colour) can be influenced by the relation between the feature and the semantic properties of the stimulus. We examined semantic interference from the meaning of a colour word ("RED") on simple colour (ink related) detection responses in a patient with simultagnosia…

The applicability of Vantage Theory (VT), a model of (colour) categorization, to linguistic data largely depends on the modifications and adaptations of the model for the purpose. An attempt to do so proposed here, called Extended Vantage Theory (EVT), slightly reformulates the VT conception of vantage by capitalizing on some of the entailments of…

The article presents a usage-based analysis of color attribution, i.e. the construal of the relation between color property and an entity to which it is attributed in painting descriptions. The study is based on the corpus of 100 catalog entries written for American art museums. It focuses on the two most frequent morpho-syntactic patterns in the…

The validity of the linguistic relativity principle continues to stimulate vigorous debate and research. The debate has recently shifted from the behavioural investigation arena to a more biologically grounded field, in which tangible physiological evidence for language effects on perception can be obtained. Using brain potentials in a colour…

Do the viewpoint costs incurred when naming rotated familiar objects arise during initial identification or during consolidation? To answer this question we employed an attentional blink (AB) task where two target objects appeared amongst a rapid stream of distractor objects. Our assumption was that while both targets and distractors undergo…

The relationship between age of onset of blindness and development of knowledge of color relations was examined with 16 college students who had been born totally blind, 16 who had been blinded totally at approximately 15 years of age, and 16 who had normal vision. Ss were asked to judge the similarities between color names, and judgments were…

Presents a system which supports image retrieval by high-level chromatic contents, the sensations that color accordances generate on the observer. Surveys Itten's theory of color semantics and discusses image description and query specification. Presents examples of visual querying. (AEF)

Ethnoscience studies, and studies of color vocabulary in particular, have firmly established that to understand the full range of meaning of a word in any language, each new language must be approached on its own terms, without a priori theories of semantic universals. It has been shown that color words in fact encode a great deal of…

The review summarizes empirical findings and theoretical views related to the Stroop color-word phenomenon, in which naming of a color is disrupted and delayed by the presence of an "irrelevant" word denoting a color different from the color patch. It was deemed important to increase awareness of this phenomenon, since it involves basic…

Recent empirical research into the meaning of words for color provides evidence that contradicts two widely held beliefs in linguistics and the philosophy of language. This paper presents a summary of this evidence, uses it as a basis to construct a general model of basic color-term semantics, and explores the implications of this model for…