Comparing color qualia structures through a similarity task in young children versus adults.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America March 18, 2025 Yusuke Moriguchi, Ryoichi Watanabe, Chifumi Sakata et al. 13 citations
Color qualia—the subjective experience of color, such as the quality of redness—are similar across age and culture. Using a task that obtained pairwise similarity judgments via intuitive visual interfaces, researchers tested children aged 3 to 12 in Japan and 6 to 8 in China, comparing them with Japanese adults. About half of 3-year-olds completed the touch-panel task reliably. Despite developmental and cultural differences in color-term usage, color qualia structures were quite similar across all groups. This suggests that these structures emerge early in life. Subtle age-related differences in evaluations of some color pairs imply minor changes in color experience with development.