Shared cognitive representations of perceptual and semantic structures of basic colors in Chinese and English

Two perceptual structures (based on colors) and one semantic structure (bas ed on names) of eight basic chromatic colors were obtained from three judge d similarity tasks for 41 Mandarin Chinese-speaking females in Taiwan and 3 5 English-speaking females in the United States. Major findings include the following: (i) there are robust and reliable individual differences among individuals, (ii) the structures for Chinese and English speakers are simil ar, and (iii) the semantic structure of color names is similar to the perce ptual structures of colors. The results place strong constraints on theorie s relating to individual differences, linguistic relativity, and the relati on of perceptual and semantic structures for colors.