Color them categorical

(Photo by MichaelMaggs)

When all is said and done, we humans tend to remember categories more than individuals.

This was especially apparent during a recent study by Jonathan Flombaum, a cognitive psychologist at John Hopkins University.

According to Live Science, Flombaum and his team “conducted four experiments” on how participants perceived various colors.

By asking people to identify different hues, researchers found that “fuzzy naming” was most prevalent near the boundaries between colors.  Participants therefore tended to “choose the same shades as the best example of each color.” 

These “best example” shades were then seen as representative of the entire color category.  In other words, many shades of blue would be cognitively lumped together under the umbrella of the “best example” shade of blue.  Sort of like:  “You’ve seen one blue, you’ve seen them all…”

Flombaum therefore concluded:  In general, we tend to remember things as more similar to our expectations of how those things are.

Resources

http://news.yahoo.com/shady-science-brain-remembers-colors-114650449.html

Copyright June 8, 2015 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved