Color Categorization in Bilingual Populations: Korean-English Bilinguals

Empirical research on the influence of language on cognition often focuses on the domain of color categorization. With a global increase in bilingualism, investigating how semantic information is cognitively processed by speakers of two languages is especially important. For example, it remains uncertain whether a bilingual’s sensory representation of color appearance similarity is affected by their linguistic representations of color semantics. The literature on this topic has primarily examined the color naming of bilingual participants in non-English language modes. To address this gap in the literature, the present study compares color categorization and naming of bilinguals in both of their known languages. The study investigates Korean-English Bilinguals as the Korean color lexicon has interesting features that differentiate it from the English color lexicon. In particular, research suggests that Korean has two highly salient basic color terms for the region of color space that in English language would be described with the single color term “green” (Roberson, Hanley & Pak, 2008). We examine whether bilingual participant’s categorization of colors vary across language of testing, especially in relation to categorization and naming observed for the green region of color space involving category differences across Korean and English.