The perception of colour and form: what we have learned from the Himba, by Jules DAVIDOFF (Goldsmiths University of London, UK)

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titleThe perception of colour and form: what we have learned from the Himba, by Jules DAVIDOFF (Goldsmiths University of London, UK)
start_date2019/09/09
schedule14h
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summaryTwenty years ago, we visited the Himba of Namibia in the hope of confirming our answer to the question about whether colour categories are formed via colour terms. We had argued this to be the case in New Guinea for another 5 colour-term language.  We confirmed our previous findings that colour categories were culturally driven.  Other perceptual categories were examined with a similar motivation and during those tasks we found that the Himba were not susceptible to visual illusions that have been considered intrinsic to the basic physiology of our visual system. During these investigations, we found that the Himba showed a pronounced local bias and predicted that they would be more susceptible to simultaneous lightness contrast; this turned out to be the case. The role of urban experience in changing local bias has been a feature of our work. Most recently, we have returned to the question of colour categories and found that the Himba are no longer a 5 colour-term language.
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