CULTURAL BELIEFS AS NONTRIVIAL CONSTRAINTS ON CATEGORIZATION - EVIDENCE FROM COLORS AND ODORS

The following provides further arguments for the nonuniversality of co lor as an autonomous dimension. Research on odors suggests that there are cultural constraints on the abstraction of dimensions for objects. Color vision analysis leads to an overemphasis on the role of percept ual processes in categorization. The study of odors points to human ac tivities as a more important principle of categorization that drives t he perceptual processing and suggests a reconsideration of vision itse lf.