In a new fascinating study by Qiawen Liu, Jeroen van Paridon, and Gary Lupyan published in Psychological Science, they show how language structures influence color–adjective associations. Remarkably, this influence reaches right down to those born blind. Our study finds that these relationships are more strongly influenced by language than visual experience alone. This result upends decades’ worth of expectations regarding the nature of color perception itself, and the implications it has for the relationship between perception and language.
To do this, the researchers took advantage of novel computational techniques to examine the relationship between colors and adjectives. They investigated the role of second-order co-occurrences in elucidating these associations. From their findings, they mapped color-adjective connections into a database of English-language writings. This revealed how language constrains our conception of color, highlighting that both blind and sighted people utilize the same linguistic patterns to form these relationships.
The research reveals that some colors are naturally associated with particular descriptors. As just one example, the color red is a common choice for the value “hot,” while blue usually represents “cold.” To do this, the researchers read example sentences in their dataset under a microscope. They found connections that were strongly predictive of learning color adjective associations.
Exploring Color-Adjective Associations
In another study, Liu, van Paridon, and Lupyan 2020b investigated color-adjective associations by means of a projection method. They compared the performance of embeddings trained on different diverse spoken and written language corpora. Their goal was to pinpoint just how these associations play out in English.
“We apply a projection method to word embeddings trained on corpora of spoken and written language to identify color-adjective associations as they are represented in English,” – Qiawen Liu, Jeroen van Paridon, and Gary Lupyan.
This comprehensive research demonstrated the extreme importance of indirect links between terms as indispensable for the learning process. These second-order co-occurrences are immensely powerful in shaping the associations people form. As described in this method, this approach allows the researchers to identify the linguistic factors at play that shape how we perceive colors.
They found that participants were able to discern words that best connected colors with certain adjectives. This result underscores the human capacity for powerful connections. This serves as an important reminder about the power of language to create cognitive associations, even if one’s personal experience with vision differs.
Comparative Analysis of Blind and Sighted Participants
Specifically, the researchers wanted to learn more about how these color-adjective associations are developed. Along the way, they constantly tested their models by trying to predict which associations would be reported by both blind and sighted English speakers. The analysis uncovered remarkable uniformity in the power of these relationships, with little difference between the two districts.
“These projections were predictive of color-adjective associations reported by blind and sighted English speakers,” – Qiawen Liu, Jeroen van Paridon, and Gary Lupyan.
This discovery provides preliminary evidence that linguistic factors can engage the same cognitive processes for people who do not have access to visual experiences. The research emphasizes that language serves as a powerful tool for learning and understanding concepts, including those related to color.
The study also evaluated how participants rated the sources of their knowledge—whether visual or linguistic—which provided further insights into the dynamics of color-adjective associations.
Implications of the Findings
The implications of this study go well beyond mere academic interest. These results show how powerful language is in determining the mental associations we form between colors. This provides a new angle on the classic phenomenon that language shapes perception.
“Some of these associations are grounded in visual experiences such as seeing glowing red embers. Surprisingly, despite having no visual experience, many congenitally blind people show very similar color associations, which are likely learned through language. We show that these associations are indeed embedded in the statistical structure of language,” – Qiawen Liu, Jeroen van Paridon, and Gary Lupyan.
The researchers found some particularly creative ways to augment their training corpora. They determined for the first time how to most effectively phrase color adjective associations to their models.
“By augmenting the training corpora in various ways, we discover the types of sentences most responsible for conveying the color-adjective associations to the models,” – Qiawen Liu, Jeroen van Paridon, and Gary Lupyan.
The implications are clear. The first step is an obvious one: we must better understand how language creates cognitive links. This understanding can tremendously shape pedagogical practice and cognitive science research.
