Influence of an object’s typical color on color memory

Abstract

　This paper presents the results of a study on changes in memory for object color. In ex1, we presented object images painted with the color near the boundary between the two categories to participants. Objects in 2 conditions have a typical color known in general, and objects in another condition have low color typicality. The result found that color memory may change in the direction towards the typical color of each object with high color typicality when two object images of the same color are presented. On the other hand, no significant differences found for objects with atypical colors. In ex2, the participants were required to classify a set of color patches into several color categories. The patches were composed of the same colors used in ex1. When the color categories classified by the patch were different from the typical colors of the objects, color memory changed more in the direction of the typical color than that of the focal color of the category. These results suggest that knowledge about typical colors of objects may affect color recognition and memory.