Conceptualization of perceptual attributes: A special case for color?

Young children experience difficulties establishing conceptual representati ons of color compared with everyday objects. We argue that comparing the de velopment of color cognition to that of familiar objects is inappropriate s ince color is a perceptual attribute that can be abstracted from an object and by itself lacks functional significance. Instead, we compared the recog nition, perceptual saliency, and naming of color to that of three other per ceptual object attributes (motion, form, and size) in 47 children aged 2 to 5 years as a function of language age. Results revealed that, although col or was perceptually salient relative to the other visual attributes. no sel ective impairment to color cognition (recognition and naming) was found rel ative to the three other visual attributes tested. Thus. when the appropria te comparisons are made, we find no special delay in the development of col or conceptualization. Furthermore, the striking disparity between perceptua l saliency and cognition of color in our youngest age groups suggests that perceptual saliency has little influence on the conceptual development of c olor. (C) 2001 Academic Press.