Abstract
Purpose: :
Studies regarding the color categorization are focused in anthropological and cognitive areas as the cultural differences of colors and naming of the colors. The influence of the color discrimination in color categorization is few addressed. Our purpose is to evaluate the discrimination of colors and compare it with the categorization of colors using the FMH100.
Methods: :
We applied the Farsnworth-Munsell (FMH100) color test in 18 naive subjects (10 women, age between 19 e 24 yrs). For color discrimination, the standard arrangement of the caps in order according the color to form a regular color series (matching to sample); for categorization, the caps were randomly presented one-to-one and the task was to categorize the respective color in a four grade system: red, green, yellow or blue. Data were normalized and the comparison in both methods considered the gender.
Results: :
We found a statistical difference between color discrimination and categorization for male (p= .021). Male and female were different also for naming (p= .014). A positive correlation was found between discrimination and categorization for male (r=0,28; p= 0,007). General Discriminat Analisys, used to assigning data cases to one of a fixed number of possible categories, was able to indicate the edges for the four classes of color and differences were found between men and women, both for discrimination and for categorization (p< .050).
Conclusions: :
We conclude that male and female differ in color discrimination and categorization. For male, the color categorization is more related to the color discrimination than female.
Keywords: color appearance/constancy • color vision • perception