Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Why do we describe blueberries as blue as opposed to white (their inside color)? People might label object colors entirelyaccording to what they see most frequently. We hypothesized instead that labeling takes into account typical viewingconditions (outside/daytime) and object causal history (colors relationship to function; Cohen, 2004). We further predictedthat these intuitions develop independently of visual experience. Sighted (n=15) and congenitally blind (n=20) participantschose one of two color labels for novel objects, described as having different colors (or textures) on the inside/outsideor during daylight/nighttime. On some day/night trials, objects had nighttime-intended functions. Sighted and blindindividuals alike chose observer-centric outside and day colors by default, but switched to nighttime colors when objectshad nighttime functions. First-person visual experience is not required for color-labeling to take into account observercharacteristics and object causal history.