Infants can categorise colours even before they speak

Infants aged between five and seven months are able to categorise colours in their brain, even before the acquisition of language, a new study has found.
Researchers from Chuo University, Japan Women's University and Tohoku University in Japan show that the category of colours can be independent of language, at least in the early stage of development in an infant's visual system.
Infants five to seven months old were tested to see if brain activity is different for colours in different categories.
The brain activity was measured by a near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technique, which realises comfortable measurement of brain activity in infants.

A long-held theory called Sapir-Wharf hypothesis claims that languages define our perceptions. This theory is widely accepted in various fields of study including psychology, linguistics and anthropology.
Colour perception is also considered to be subject to this theory, since colours are called by their names in daily communications.

Through numerous studies on the colour lexicons of languages in the world, categorical colour perception is considered to be strongly affected by language.
On the other hand, the similarity of colour categories across linguistic and cultural differences is also reported as strong evidence of the universality of colour categories.
Therefore, whether or not language affects colour categories has been a central issue related to how we perceive colours.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.