Why do we see the colors we see? and other related color perception questions
This week Illustrated Research was officially launched and illustrations were posted covering a variety of articles centered around various factors that affect color and light perception.
First let’s go into a little biology lesson: how do we even see colors in the first place?
For a full in-depth explanation you can visit this site, but in short, mammalian eyes all have various layers, one of which is called the retina.
Within the retina of our eyes are specific cells that are responsible for the light and colors we see, these are called rod and cone cells. For simplicity sake, we will just generalize, but note that there are a variety of cone cells and a variety of rods cells, each with a unique responsibility and role in light and color perception.
Rod and Cone cells receive and process special proteins called opsin proteins that again, have various responsibilities, one of which has to do with color.
In 2015 , Lauren E. Welbourne found that people actually see “unique yellow” differently depending on the season. This research was again supported in the article discussed on Friday covering Medaka (Japanese Rice) fish and their seasonal changes in light and color perception. As illustrated on Friday, the fish showed a greater response to light stimuli under summer conditions than in winter conditions (Shimmura 2018).
So why do animals, including humans, see colors differently depending on the season? The precise reason for this is still unknown as up until very recently, it was thought that color perception, was constant throughout life regardless of the time of year.
Shimmura speculates that the reason for less light or color perception in the winter months or non-mating season is simply to conserve energy that can be exerted elsewhere.
Another topic discussed this week in our Monday post, was research attempting to answer the question posed by the
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis:
“Does the language one speaks affect the way one thinks?”
In short, when it comes to color, yes, the language someone speaks, does somewhat affect the way they think about, and see color. In a study by Lowry et. al, 50 Russian speakers from the city of St. Petersburg Russia were tested and compared to 50 english speaking Central Floridians.
Subjects were split evenly among 3 testing conditions:
- Subjects were shown an eye picture alongside a color chart and told to match the color they saw in the eye picture with a color on the chart. This was meant to test color perception.
2. Subjects were shown an eye picture, then a blank screen, then a grid of colors and were asked to remember the color of the eye that they had seen and match it on the chart. This was a memory test to see how the subjects remembered the eye color they had just seen.
3.Subjects were shown a picture of an eye, then a screen reading “color category”, then a screen with a grid of colors. This was testing the way the subjects labeled the colors, in other words, was the color they saw blue, grey, brown?
Of the 3 tests mentioned, in the perception test, language had no effect on the way color was initially perceived; In other words, a Russian speaker and an English speaker, when shown the same eye image alongside a color grid, would most likely choose the same color.
However, the two languages showed different results in the memory and labeling test; the Russian speakers labeled and remembered eye color as being more grey, while the English speakers remembered and labeled the colors as being more blue.
These findings suggest that language does in fact have an affect on the way we remember “real world objects” (Lowry 2018) like eyes.
Along the same lines, in a short video piece, author Gavin Evans explains the different ways languages describe colors.
In english, we have one word for red, and different word for lighter red, “pink”. In the Russian language, the same is true for blue; Russian speakers have one word for dark blue and a separate word for light blue.
Because of this distinction, Russian speakers perceive what English speakers consider to be one color (dark blue and light blue) as two completely separate colors.
The most popular example of this is with the Himba tribe of Africa who does not have a word in their language for the color blue but instead many words for different shades of green.
When shown a color wheel with all green squares and one blue square, Himba speakers had a hard time distinguishing the blue one (circle on the left below). Similarly, when English speakers were shown a color wheel of green squares with one varying slightly in shade, they had a hard time distinguishing the one shade of green that was different(circle on the right below).
As humans we perceive colors as being in categories; something is either red, blue, yellow, orange etc. But where is the line between red and orange? And do other animals categorize colors the same way we do?
In a 2017 study by Caves et. al found that zebra finches, known for selectively choosing males with red beaks during mating, do in fact categorize beaks as being “red” or “not red enough”(orange).
The findings suggest that the way we see and categorize colors, may be more than just societal and cultural constructs and may actually have “deep biological roots” shared with many species (Smith 2018). This is not to be confused with the connects discussed above; regardless of language, humans put colors in categories. We may have slightly different categories depending on the languages we speak but there are still categories nonetheless.
All of these things are still being researched and are only very recent discoveries. The way that humans have thought about colors and our perception of them is constantly changing and evolving which, I think, is pretty cool!
Next week we will cover a variety of recent research pertaining to environmental communication, which is right up our alley, so if you would like to see those posts as they come out, follow us on instagram, and to learn more about what illustrated research is you can check out our first blog post here.
What do you think about these research articles? Are there any questions you have or other research you know about?
P.s. check out this dope picture of rod and cone cells in the retina of an eye under a microscope!
works cited:
Categorical Perception of Colour Signals in a Songbird,” Eleanor M. Caves, Patrick A. Green, Matthew N. Zipple, Susan Peters, Sönke Johnsen and Stephen Nowicki. Nature, August 1, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0377-7
Lowry, M. & Bryant, J. J Psycholinguist Res (2018). https://doi-org.access.library.miami.edu/10.1007/s10936-018-9597-0
L.E. Welbourne, A.B. Morland, A.R. Wade Human colour perception changes between seasons. Curr. Biol., 25 (2015), pp. R646-R647
Tsuyoshi Shimmura, Tomoya Nakayamaac, Ai Shinomiyaab, Takashi Yoshimura, Seasonal changes in color perception
General and Comparative Endocrinology Vol. 260, 1 May 2018, Pages 171–174 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2017.12.010
