We present a neural network architecture to predict a point in color space from the sequence of characters in the color's name. Using large scale color--name pairs obtained from an online color design forum, we evaluate our model on a "color Turing test" and find that, given a name, the colors predicted by our model are preferred by annotators to color names created by humans. Our datasets and demo system are available online at this http URL.
Recent evidence suggests that colors and words are associated in the brain. The brain uses different regions to perceive various modalities, but processing a color word activates the same brain region as the color it denotes @cite_21 @cite_8 .
@cite_21 @cite_8
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Abstract In this study, we investigated the spatio-temporal patterns of category-specific cortical activation elicited by the visual presentation of words whose meaning relates to a color or to a visual form or shape. We recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) of ten healthy, right-handed volunteers while they passively read words presented tachistoscopically. As early as 150 ms after stimulus onset, the ERPs revealed significant neurophysiological differences between words and strings of hash marks. Around 200 ms after stimulus onset, we found significant differences in the ERPs elicited by color- and form-related words. We used minimum norm current estimates to investigate the spatial location of these differences. This revealed that, at the 150 ms peak, the activation advantage of words over sequences of hash marks was located in a left posterior area, proximal to what has previously been called the visual word form area. At the 200 ms peak, the advantage of words related to colors over words related to forms seemed to reside in temporal cortical areas, whereas the form-related words elicited greater activation in frontal areas than color-related words. These results provide evidence for early access to detailed category-specific representations of word meaning, with subtle differences in meaning being reflected in the activation of different cortical areas, as early as 200 ms after stimulus presentation. In line with previous studies, these differences can be related to the areas involved in the conceptual processing of sensory (visual) and action-related information. Recent research has shown that a two second glimpse of color can have an important influence on affect, cognition, and behavior. The present research examined whether perceiving color is necessary to produce an effect on psychological functioning or whether the mere act of processing a color word might be sufficient. Specifically, four experiments tested the hypothesis that processing the word red undermines intellectual performance, much like actually perceiving the color red. Supportive data were obtained with three different types of subtle manipulation, with three different types of control words, and on two different types of IQ test performance. Worry, but not mood or general arousal, was shown to mediate the semantic red effect, which appears to take place outside of individuals’ awareness. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. Functional neuroimaging research has demonstrated that retrieving information about object-associated colors activates the left fusiform gyrus in posterior temporal cortex. Although regions near the fusiform have previously been implicated in color perception, it remains unclear whether color knowledge retrieval actually activates the color perception system. Evidence to this effect would be particularly strong if color perception cortex was activated by color knowledge retrieval triggered strictly with linguistic stimuli. To address this question, subjects performed two tasks while undergoing fMRI. First, subjects performed a property verification task using only words to assess conceptual knowledge. On each trial, subjects verified whether a named color or motor property was true of a named object (e.g., TAXI-yellow, HAIR-combed). Next, subjects performed a color perception task. A region of the left fusiform gyrus that was highly responsive during color perception also showed greater activity for retrieving color than motor property knowledge. These data provide the first evidence for a direct overlap in the neural bases of color perception and stored information about object-associated color, and they significantly add to accumulating evidence that conceptual knowledge is grounded in the brain's modality-specific systems. People interpret abstract meanings from colors, which makes color a useful perceptual feature for visual communication. This process is complicated, however, because there is seldom a one-to-one correspondence between colors and meanings. One color can be associated with many different concepts (one-to-many mapping) and many colors can be associated with the same concept (many-to-one mapping). We propose that to interpret color-coding systems, people perform assignment inference to determine how colors map onto concepts. We studied assignment inference in the domain of recycling. Participants saw images of colored but unlabeled bins and were asked to indicate which bins they would use to discard different kinds of recyclables and trash. In Experiment 1, we tested two hypotheses for how people perform assignment inference. The local assignment hypothesis predicts that people simply match objects with their most strongly associated color. The global assignment hypothesis predicts that people also account for the association strengths between all other objects and colors within the scope of the color-coding system. Participants discarded objects in bins that optimized the color-object associations of the entire set, which is consistent with the global assignment hypothesis. This sometimes resulted in discarding objects in bins whose colors were weakly associated with the object, even when there was a stronger associated option available. In Experiment 2, we tested different methods for encoding color-coding systems and found that people were better at assignment inference when color sets simultaneously maximized the association strength between assigned color-object parings while minimizing associations between unassigned pairings. Our study provides an approach for designing intuitive color-coding systems that facilitate communication through visual media such as graphs, maps, signs, and artifacts.