Investigation into Color Categorization by Young Adults and Elderly People

Abstract

We carried out a categorical color naming experiment using young adults and elderly people as observers.The experiment was designed to investigate the effects of mode of color appearance (surface and aperture modes) ,and illuminants (four types of fluorescent:D-EDL-D65,N-EDL,EX-L and W) .The experiment used a series of Munsell chips which were presented separately,and the observers were asked to categorize them into one of 11 categories (red,pink,orange,yellow,green,blue,purple,brown,white,gray,and black) .The constancy of the categorization results was high for the young adults but not for the elderly observers.The elderly observers categorization constancy was poor for chips with hues RP,R,YR,and Y.Illuminants did not affect the categorization for the young adults very much but had a relatively large effect on the elderly observers.The color appearance mode had a slight affect on the categorization constancy of both groups of observers.