Citation

Wurm LH, Legge GE, Isenberg LM, Luebker A. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1993; 19(4): 899-911.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8409865

Abstract

Does color improve object recognition? If so, is the improvement greater for images with low spatial resolution in which there is less shape information? Do people with low visual acuity benefit more from color? Three experiments measured reaction time (RT) and accuracy for naming food objects displayed in 4 types of images: gray scale or color, and high or low spatial resolution (produced by blur). Normally sighted Ss had faster RTs with color, but the improvement was not significantly greater for images with low spatial resolution. Low vision subjects were also faster with color, but the difference did not depend significantly on acuity. In 2 additional experiments, it was found that the faster RTs for color stimuli were related to objects' prototypicality but not to their color diagnosticity. It was concluded that color does improve object recognition, and the mechanism is probably sensory rather than cognitive in origin.

Language: en