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The acquisition of colour terms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Gail Rex Andrick  and
Helen Tager-Flusberg
Gail Rex Andrick
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Boston
Helen Tager-Flusberg*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Boston
*
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA.
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Abstract

The acquisition of colour terms in pre-school-aged children was investigated in two studies. The first study explored the role of conceptual factors in 2-, 3- and 4-year-old children's performance on two tasks. Comprehension and production of basic colour words were tested using stimuli that varied in focality. The results confirmed earlier research demonstrating the important and early influence of focality on children's colour concepts and developing colour lexicon. However, only moderate support was obtained for the order-of-acquisition hypothesis proposed by Berlin & Kay (1969). Quite large discrepancies between comprehension and production were found in this study, with no clear relationship between these two performances. In the second study the role of maternal input on children's learning of colour words was investigated, using the spontaneous speech transcripts from Adam, Eve and Sarah. Significant correlations between mothers' and children's uses of specific colour words were found across all three subjects. The findings from both studies confirm that both conceptual and environmental factors are important in shaping the child's developing colour concepts and colour lexicon, particularly for mapping out the boundaries of the basic colour spaces, which are culturally, rather than innately, determined.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 119 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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Footnotes

*

The research described in this paper was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (5 RO1 MH 37074). We are grateful to the children and teachers in the following schools for participating in the study: University of Massachusetts Boston Child Care Center; Harvard Yard Child Care Center; and Soldiers Field Park Children's Center. The research was part of an Honors thesis by the first author, submitted to the Psychology department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Some of the data reported in this paper were presented at the Third International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Austin, Texas, July 1984.

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