Abstracts of Publications & Conference presentations
A categorical colour effect in the brown-orange boundary
Julio Lillo1, Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed2 and H.Moreira3
Department of Psychology. Differences and Work. Complutense University Madrid.Spain.
Department of Psychology. University of Surrey. Guilford. United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology. University Cardenal Cisneros. Madrid. Spain
A colour categorical effect appears when, for similar inter-stimuli distance, it is detected a bigger perceptual change for stimuli belonging to different categories (inter-category change) than between stimuli belonging to the same category (intra-category change). Our research framework was the brown-orange transition. All the stimuli we used had the same chromatic co-ordinates(u’ =0.32; v’=0.53),but varied in luminance. In the first experiment stimuli were named using brown or orange(forced choice) and were presented on two different backgrounds(articulated or non-articulated). Background type in fluenced the luminance value where the brown-orange transition appeared. Its value was bigger for the articulated background. Such result agrees with the predictions derived from the Gilchrist’ sanchoring theory on lightness perception and indicates that L* calculus must consider the background type where a stimulus is presented. A second experiment detected a categorical perception effect using a visual searching task. Such task required observers to localise (right or left) a target stimulus. Shorter times and fewer errors appeared when target and distractors belonged to different categories(inter-category change). On the other hand, and differing with other works results, no evidence of laterality was found (the categorical effect appeared both for stimuli on the right and on the left).
Biological Components of Color Preference are not Universal.
Anna Franklin1, Chloe Taylor2, Abdulrahman Al-Rasheed3,Alexandra Clifford2, James Alvarez2;
Department of Psychology. University of Sussex. Brighton, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology. University of Surrey. Guilford. United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology. University of King Saud, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It has been proposed that color preference is largely governed by the two cone-opponent processes that underlie sensory encoding of color, and that robust sex differences in the weighting of these ?biological components? of color preference evolved in line with sex differences in the behavioural use of color vision (Hurlbert & Ling, 2007). In support of this theory, Hurlbert and Ling found that cone-contrast between stimulus and background (L-M, S-(L+M)) explained 70% of the variance in hue preference, with a sex difference in the weighting of L-M cone-contrast for both British and Chinese samples. Here, we further investigate whether cone-contrast effectively summarizes color preference, and whether the sex difference in L-M is indeed robust and ?universal?. In a series of three experiments, we measured color preference using three different stimulus sets, and tested British, Saudi, Archis (a rural ethnic group in southern Daghestan) and Himba (a semi-nomadic ethnic group in northern Namibia) samples. Regression analyses were run on preference ratings to establish the percentage of variance explained by L-M and S-(L+M) stimulus-background cone-contrast (and CIE-LUV lightness, chroma and saturation), and to identify the weights on these different components. Results indicate that stimulus-background cone-contrast is less effective at summarising color preference the wider the gamut of the stimulus set (see also Palmer & Schloss, 2010). The sex difference in the weighting of L-M was present for the Saudi sample (females weight L-M positively, males negatively), but was not present for the Archis or Himba, and was not reliable across the three experiments for the British. In addition, Himba preference was predominantly explained by chroma (higher chroma, higher preference: 74% of the variance), rather than stimulus background cone-contrast. Overall, the findings challenge the theory that color preference is heavily and universally constrained by the biological components of color vision.
Left Hemisphere Lateralisation of Categorical Colour Perception among Roman and Arabic Script Readers
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed, Anna Franklin, Drivonikou, V, and Ian R. L. Davies.
Department of Psychology. University of King Saud, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Psychology. University of Sussex. Brighton, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology. University of Surrey. Guilford. United Kingdom.
So far, the Left Hemisphere (LH) bias in colour Categorical Perception (CP) has been related to the linguistic nature of the LH and converging evidence to support this hypothesis has been presented (e.g., Gilbert et al. 2006; Drivonikou et al. 2007 a & b; Roberson et al. 2008; Tan, Chan, Kay, Khong, Yip & Luke, 2008; Liu et al. 2009). As, to date, no studies of lateralised CP have been conducted on right-to-left readers in support of this theory. However, the influence of reading habits to perception has been shown in several studies (e.g., Eviatar, 1995, 1997; Farid, & Grainger 1996; Prunet, Beland & Adrissi 2000; Berent 2002; Schwalm, Eviatar, Golan & Blumenfeld, 2003). The aim of this study is to investigates the possible effect of habitual scanning on lateralisation of colour CP, by comparing participants from two languages who vary in their reading direction: left-to-right in English and right-to-left in Arabic. Lateralisation of CP was then tested in two groups using first, a visual search task, and then a target detection task with eye-movement latencies as the dependent variable. Yet again, the pattern of lateralisation has been replicated, but this time, it has also been shown that the effect is independent of habitual reading direction. It appears that reading direction has no effect on how colour CP is lateralised.
Categorical Perception of colour: Evidence from Left to Right Script Readers
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed
King Saud University – Education College – Psychology Department-the KSA
Categorical Perception (CP) of colour is faster and/or more accurate discrimination of pair of stimuli that cross a category boundary (across-category), than two stimuli from the same category (within-category), even when the stimulus differences between the pairs of stimuli are equal. Colour CP has been reported in a wide range of studies, and has also been reported on a wide range of colour perception tasks. So far, it is not clear what the origin and nature of this effect is and it has been extensively debated on the degree to which language and perception contribute to the category effect. As, to date, no studies of colour CP have been conducted on right-to-left readers in adding more dimensions to this debates even when the influence of reading habits to perception has been shown in many studies .The present experiments investigate the possible effect of habitual scanning to CP of colour, by comparing participants from two languages who vary in their reading direction: left-to-right in English and right-to-left in Arabic. participants were all under- and post-graduate students of Surrey university. The English group consisted of 18 native English-speakers and the Arabic group consisted of 20 native Arabic-speakers. Their ages ranging from 18 to 30 years old. Expeiment1 a target detection task with eye-movement measure (time to initiate). Expeiment2 a target detection task with eye-movement measure (time to fixate). Both samples performed similarly and the pattern of colour CP has been replicated, but this time, it has been shown that the effect is independent of habitual reading direction. It appears that reading direction has no effect on colour CP.
Further Evidence of Whorfian Effects to the Right Visual Field in Present-Absent and Pop Out Tasks
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed1, Anna Franklin2, Drivonikou3, V, and Ian R. L. Davies3.
1Department of Psychology. University of King Saud. Riyadh, KSU
2Department of Psychology. University of Sussex. Brighton. United Kingdom.
3Department of Psychology. University of Surrey. Guilford. United Kingdom.
The Left Hemisphere (LH) bias in colour Categorical Perception (CP) has been related to the linguistic nature of the LH and converging evidence to support this hypothesis has been presented (e.g., Gilbert et al. 2006; Drivonikou et al. 2007 a & b; Roberson et al. 2008; Tan, Chan, Kay, Khong, Yip & Luke, 2008; Liu et al. 2009). However, So far, all studies that tested the lateralised CP effect have used either the visual search task of Gilbert et al (2006) or the target detection task of Drivonikou et al (2007) with most of these tasks involving a spatial decision about whether the target is on the left or the right, and it is important to establish that the effect is independent of the detailed methods used. Here, we extended the investigation to include two other types of tasks: First, varying the number of distractors affects lateralised CP (Experiment 1) and then whether removing the spatial decision (left or right of fixation) affects lateralised CP (Experiment 2). Forty native English-speaking undergraduates recruited from the student population of the University of Surrey the UK were participated in this study. The results showed that the pattern of lateralisation was independent of the number of distractors, confirming that, detecting a target colour amongst differently coloured distractors is a ‘pop-out’ task, and confirming that the LH bias is invariant across basic changes in the nature of the task.
Berlin and Kay’s theory of color universals and linguistic relativity: the case of Arabic.
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed1, Humood H. Al-Sharif=2, Mohammed J. Thabit=2,
Norah S. Al-Mohimeed2 and Ian R. L. Davies1
1Department of Psychology. University of Surrey. Guilford. United Kingdom.
2Department of Psychology. University of King Saud. Riyadh, KSU
The aims of this study were to describe the basic colour terms (BCTs) of Arabic and, in particular, clarify the relationship among the three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee, and khuhlie. Data were collected from child and adult native Arabic speakers from schools and universities in Riyadh using a list task and a naming task. In the list task, the children’s sample included 113 boys and 140 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 200) was made up of equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 25 years (mean = 20 years). The task involved writing down as many colour words as they knew, in four minutes for the children, and one minute for the adults. The pattern of results from the two samples was essentially the same: the terms ordered by their frequency from 100 to 38 percent were ahmar ‘red’, azrock ‘blue’, akhdar ‘green’, asfer ‘yellow’, asswed ‘black’, abiyadh ‘white’ boartoogaalee ‘orange’, bonee ‘brown’, wardee ‘pink’, banafsagee ‘purple’, and rassasee ‘grey’. In addition, samawee ‘light blue’ was provided by 40 percent of the sample. This is followed by a drop in the frequency scores, with khuhlie ‘dark blue’ being included in 38.6 percent of the responses. In regard to the colour naming task, the child sample included 30 boys and 30 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 60) include equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 28 years. The task involved naming each example of a set of 65 colours representing the whole colour palette. The two samples again performed similarly. The terms with the highest measures of usage and consensus were ahmar, azrock, akhdar, asfer, asswed, abiyadh, boartoogaalee, bonee, wardee, banafsagee, and rassasee. Based on these results, it appears that Arabic has 11 basic colour terms that correspond to Berlin and Kay’s (1969) universal terms. In addition, the terms of particular interest—samawee (‘light blue’) and khuhlie (‘dark blue’)—are not basic Arabic colour terms.
The Relationship between School Creative Climate and Pupils Creative Thinking
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed
King Saud University – Education College – Psychology Department-the KSA
Finding of numerous studies point to the significance of the role of the environment and the surrounding circumstances in the development of creative ability. Even some of these findings went further to state that hereditary plays lesser role than the environment in this respect. The studies conducted by (Dafenuort,1967) and (Rechemon,1988) that the correlation between the creative abilities of brothers is week. This clearly indicates that the role of hereditary is week in formation of creative thinking. This finding has been corroborated by the studies of (Medyas, 1972) vis-à-vis twin brothers who scored correlation of 0.54 and 0.85 in creativity scale
The current study shows the relationship between the creative school environment and creative thinking. In addition to the sub-relationship between the various aspects of the school creative environment and the creative thinking, where it has attached these conditions to the creative school environment: developing of creative abilities and skills, developing personal traits of the creative individual and teachers' trends towards developing the creative abilities. This study was conducted in a sample population of 252 public and private intermediate school Pupils in Riyadh, KSA, whose age category was (12-16) years. Torrance Test for creative thinking (B) was used in addition to the creative school environment scale. Findings of this study showed a significance level at 0.05 between the creative school environment and the Pupils' creative thinking. In regard to the aspects of the creative thinking (namely developing the traits of the creative individual and teachers' trends towards developing creative thinking) at 0.01 significance level. No level of significance was shown regarding the aspect of developing creative abilities.
Family Creative Environment and Children's Creative Thinking
Abdul Rahman S. Al-Rasheed
KSU – Education College – Psychology Department. The KSA
Finding of numerous studies point to the significance of the role of the environment and the surrounding circumstances in the development of creative ability. Even some of these findings went further to state that hereditary plays lesser role than the environment in this respect. The studies conducted by (Dafenuort,1967) and (Rechemon,1988) that the correlation between the creative abilities of brothers is week. This clearly indicates that the role of hereditary is week in formation of creative thinking. This finding has been corroborated by the studies of (Medyas, 1972) vis-à-vis twin brothers who scored correlation of 0.54 and 0.85 in creativity scale
The current study shows the relationship between the creative school environment and creative thinking. In addition to the sub-relationship between the various aspects of the school creative environment and the creative thinking, where it has attached these conditions to the creative school environment: developing of creative abilities and skills, developing personal traits of the creative individual and teachers' trends towards developing the creative abilities. This study was conducted in a sample population of 252 public and private intermediate school Pupils in Riyadh, KSA, whose age category was (12-16) years. Torrance Test for creative thinking (B) was used in addition to the creative school environment scale. Findings of this study showed a significance level at 0.05 between the creative school environment and the Pupils' creative thinking. In regard to the aspects of the creative thinking (namely developing the traits of the creative individual and teachers' trends towards developing creative thinking) at 0.01 significance level. No level of significance was shown regarding the aspect of developing creative abilities.
Basic colour terms of Arabic
Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed, Humood H. Al-Sharif, Mohammed J. Thabit,
Norah S. Al-Mohimeed and Ian R. L. Davies
The aims of this study were to describe the basic colour terms (BCTs) of Arabic and, in particular, clarify the relationship among the three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee, and khuhlie. Data were collected from child and adult native Arabic speakers from schools and universities in Riyadh using a list task and a naming task. In the list task, the children’s sample included 113 boys and 140 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 200) was made up of equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 25 years (mean = 20 years). The task involved writing down as many colour words as they knew, in four minutes for the children, and one minute for the adults. The pattern of results from the two samples was essentially the same: the terms ordered by their frequency from 100 to 38 percent were ahmar ‘red’, azrock ‘blue’, akhdar ‘green’, asfer ‘yellow’, asswed ‘black’, abiyadh ‘white’ boartoogaalee ‘orange’, bonee ‘brown’, wardee ‘pink’, banafsagee ‘purple’, and rassasee ‘grey’. In addition, samawee ‘light blue’ was provided by 40 percent of the sample. This is followed by a drop in the frequency scores, with khuhlie ‘dark blue’ being included in 38.6 percent of the responses. In regard to the colour naming task, the child sample included 30 boys and 30 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 60) include equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 28 years. The task involved naming each example of a set of 65 colours representing the whole colour palette. The two samples again performed similarly. The terms with the highest measures of usage and consensus were ahmar, azrock, akhdar, asfer, asswed, abiyadh, boartoogaalee, bonee, wardee, banafsagee, and rassasee. Based on these results, it appears that Arabic has 11 basic colour terms that correspond to Berlin and Kay’s (1969) universal terms. In addition, the terms of particular interest—samawee (‘light blue’) and khuhlie (‘dark blue’)—are not basic Arabic colour terms.