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Do Infants See Colors Differently?

sciam.com — How do we perceive a rainbow? And does everyone perceive a rainbow in the same way? These seemingly simple questions can reveal some interesting features of the human brain. For instance, is the “striped” appearance of the rainbow—the seven distinct bands of color that we see—a construct of our higher mental processes, or do the mechanics of human

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  • hydroplane, on 05/14/2008, -4/+37Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
    Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
    Lets me see.
    • apmtt, on 05/14/2008, -1/+5As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
      Drawn beyond the lines of reason.
      Push the envelope. watch it bend.
    • elamr, on 05/14/2008, -1/+2Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

      Maynard is strange beyond reason.
    • taosd, on 05/14/2008, -7/+4Oh man, quoting tool lyrics (or any lyrics for that matter) You're so ***** deep!
    • seraph741, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2in Tool we trust
    • Tarsmus, on 05/14/2008, -1/+1Interesting fact that many of you probably know, but the syllables in that song follow the Fibonacci Sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13...). One of hte many reasons I love Tool.
    • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+2Oh, god. Why did I know this would be the first comment?
  • drewedman, on 05/14/2008, -1/+24It's weird to think that my blue could be someone elses green and we wouldn't be able to explain what it is either of us are looking at
    • thebigbradwolf, on 05/14/2008, -1/+6I like to think my blue is everyone's favorite color, they just have a different name for it.
    • karebu, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3it's quite likely that it's a different shade. in fact they are different for my eyes (L/R).
      • neutrascrub, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1everything was darker in my left eye. Then i got lasik surgery and it went away.
    • kurupttek, on 05/14/2008, -0/+10Call me crazy but have always thought that and tried to explain it to someone but they didn't get it!
      • VinceNoir, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3Me too. In fact, I got into a heated argument with a friend about it in which we eventually just agreed to disagree. He couldn't believe that it's at all possible that what I look at and call blue might be his red. Since we'd both look at the same thing but see it completely differently and only have arbitrary terms to describe them, it stands to reason that my blue which he experiences as my red, but which he also calls blue might be completely different.
      • timusca, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Same problem here... no one understands wtf I'm trying to say. Even an optometrist.
      • makkaveli19, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1AHH i hate that. people look at me like in insane. thanks guys, you made me feel alot better
    • rainersun2005, on 05/14/2008, -0/+0i have always thought this too.But then i think that don't they have eye transplants and don't people see the same way......wait do they have eye transplants?
  • Ph0biA, on 05/14/2008, -5/+33I believe babies don't see colors... Have you ever met a racist baby? I rest my case...
    • priegog, on 05/14/2008, -1/+3Ba-dum psht
    • RealmDown, on 05/14/2008, -0/+5Sure I have. Al Sharpton comes to mind immediately.
    • bigmac7669, on 05/14/2008, -4/+0...or maybe they just haven't been brainwashed by their racist parents yet
  • Bmarofsky, on 05/14/2008, -1/+2I have always wondered about this and was just last week talking to my son about it. Interesting article.
  • acegi, on 05/14/2008, -14/+2CP

    hehe cp



    hehehe


    cp

    hehe


    heh
  • ColorBlind, on 05/14/2008, -1/+5I'm color deficient - people try to play the "color game" with me all the time.
    • loquax, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3Its a good thing you can taste correctly....
      • inigomntoya, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3And sense of smell is still there, I imagine?
        "Hey, smell this brownie - teehee"
    • MonkCanatella, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Love the name.
  • stinkipete, on 05/14/2008, -6/+5A rainbow has 6 colours. It's almost universally accepted in the scientific world.
    Most believe due to the negative associations with the number 6 in Christianity, they "added" a colour even though it is not clearly defined.
    • kertong, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Is it really 6? Roy G. Biv would be disappointed.
    • ChzPlz, on 05/14/2008, -0/+8There are no hard color division lines in a rainbow - the colours fade into each other, with an infinite number of reddish-oranges, orangey-yellows, etc etc etc.
    • Modulo, on 05/14/2008, -0/+9with as much talking out of your ass as you just did, it's no wonder you call yourself stinkipete. For one thing, the so called 7 visible colours of the rainbow are a social linguistic contruct.. For another, the human eye is extremely deficient compared to birds in what we call the blue green portion of the spectrum. If we could see color the way that birds can, we would probably have 9 colours, Violet, Indigo, Blue, Teal, Green, Lime, Yellow, Orange and Red. Not to mention ultraviolet. Retard.
  • c010rb1indusa, on 05/14/2008, -2/+10Screw babies, I'm colorblind, so what if they can't see color for the first 2 years of their life that they won't even remember. I can't see ***** for the rest of my life (unless stems cells come through for my cause). But other then that I'm pretty hopeless.
    • tEhKewleSt, on 05/14/2008, -0/+11 Boo ***** hoo.

      Every single letter of the above statement is in a slightly different color - and you can't tell!

      (points and laughs)
    • inigomntoya, on 05/14/2008, -5/+3Just a pointer - never use the words screw and babies in the same sentence. Unless, of course, it is referring to an act of creating more babies.
    • pookkake, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Screw babies?
      OGC
  • techobo, on 05/14/2008, -1/+8As far as I know, what I see as blue has a frequency interval of 670–610 THz. You might have a different word for blue, but we are both seeing the same thing.

    Well, unless you are colour blind.
    • Scynet, on 05/14/2008, -1/+5Yeah but how does the brain know what color it's supposed to show to the conscious mind when the eyes see "blue", since it's just all about wave lenghts... maybe it's showing a wrong color? And what's color anyway, since seeing only means detecting varying wavelengths? Why is the difference between wavelenghts shown as this bizarre, abstract "color"?

      Try to explain someone what green looks like without showing them an example or referring to other colors.
      • inigomntoya, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7Green looks like urine in a toilet full of that 2000 flushes stuff.
        • Scynet, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Yeah but you already compared green to other colors (color of urine and that stuff). Try not to do that: not too easy. :)
      • techobo, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Somewhere my colour teacher from art college is very angry at me for not being able to respond to your post. haha. I'll try and figure out a response for you in a bit.
    • VinceNoir, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Frequencies don't matter. Think of it this way. Let's say you have a video camera that is damaged and it sees red as more greenish. Same thing with the way the brain processes what the eye sees. If the processing is different, then the perception is different. The frequencies of the light might be the same, but what is seen is not.

      Another example is that how we see each other might not be the same. Some people might see the humans in a way that you would personally call "covered with fine hair". But they've been raised to accept that people who look that way are in fact hairless.
      • techobo, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Ok, so lets go with the camera example. If the video camera is damaged and it sees red as more greenish then you could compare it with damage to the retina, optic nerve, or higher brain areas, which is the cause of colour blindness. So if you had no damage to the retina, optic nerve or higher brain areas, you could say that you should see the same as everyone else. No? I think this was my disclaimer at the end of my post.

        But, if we use your second example, even though one might say you are hairless, they are still wrong. Right? Just because they think people are hairless doesn't mean they are right. If you tell them to take a good look at their arm, they will understand that there is hair even though it did not match their preconceived mental picture.

        With all that being said. Please don't take my post as a flame, I just want to have a discussion. I just want to understand your argument. :)
        • VinceNoir, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Well... I wasn't meaning to imply a damaged eye. I was meaning to imply a different perception altogether. Someone looks at something that you think of as red and (if you could see with their mind's eye) you would instead see what you think of yellow. They wouldn't be wrong, they would just be perceiving things differently.

          As far as hair goes, well... your definition of hairless in your experience means "without hair". But to someone else, it would also mean that, except that they would perceive a hairy arm as hairless. Q.E.D.
  • ileftfark, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7Interesting article, but a little too free-spirited. While there is much about perception we do not know, things like color are much more boring that the article would suggest. Given that we all have similar equipment (organs, brain, etc) and that equipment is functioning normally, the process of "seeing" light is really rather mechanical and mundane. If people's vision were drastically different, they would see different parts of the full spectrum of light, giving some the ability to see infra-red, and others to see ultra-violet. Sadly, we are all pretty much the same, and (blindness or color-blindness aside), we all see colors essentially the same way. Unless we just got some really good shrooms.
    • antlerboy, on 05/14/2008, -1/+1you totally just discredited your whole argument by agreeing in the end that shrooms alter your perception of color. do you know why shrooms alter your perception of color? because hallucinogens break down the tool of human language you use to separate matter into clusters of individual "objects". once language is broken down, matter is perceived for what it really is... one singular mass of all colors. this is exactly why shamans often refer to the psychedelic experience as allowing one self to be "born again into this world". to see reality, once again, with the eyes of a new born child. free to re-incorporate language into your vision through new perspectives.

      i think i just brain my hurt.
    • ileftfark, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Hence my "equipment functioning normally" disclaimer. A "normal" person will see the same thing as another "normal" person. Psychotics and drug-induced alternate realities need not apply.
  • bmerkl, on 05/14/2008, -0/+6what do you see?
    http://wiki.chainofthoughts.com/dt/en/Spectrum
    • ColorBlind, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1from left to right....i only see 4 colors.

      black, blue, something, yellow or green?, red....ish....something
    • ileftfark, on 05/14/2008, -2/+3Poor implementation of Web 2.0???
    • inigomntoya, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2a hell of a lot of red!
    • kcirtap6075, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1how the hell did they fit a dog in that?
  • fezzasus, on 05/14/2008, -1/+2Specific molecules absorb light at specific wavelengths within the retina. The molecules don't change so the signal sent to the brain should be the same. It's possible that the various counts of different receptors change with age - making some colours change in intensity with age, but it's unlike (if not impossible) that the same colour is perceived differently with age.
    • fezzasus, on 05/14/2008, -0/+3on further reading, it seems my answer has nothing to do with the article - The best comparison of this article is with a fine wine/scotch, you drink it, decide you like it but struggle to find specific flavours to pick out and mention. Someone else says that it has 'a hint of orange' and suddenly you notice the orange taste. It's the same with distinguishing colours - if you can name the colours, you can distinguish between them.
  • tEhKewleSt, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Yes...yes they do.
  • DeFex, on 05/14/2008, -0/+15who the hell sees 7 distinct bands? its a continuous fade through the spectrum.
    • TheKorn2, on 05/14/2008, -0/+5THANK YOU! I was about to write the same thing!

      I think the author needs to GO OUTSIDE and look at an *actual* rainbow once in a while, rather than experience everything through second life!
    • VinceNoir, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2People who aren't trained to see the fade simply perceive bands. Look at the way any kid draws a rainbow. Do they draw it with a fade from one color to the next? No. Not unless they are artistically or engineering inclined or just have an acute sense of detail. As a kid, when asked to draw a rainbow, I'd start with pencil to make the bands. Then I'd color them in.
      • TheKorn2, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2But that could simply be an artifact of the tools kids are given to draw with! (crayons)
    • Ikulus, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1I see bands.
    • eanbowman, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1I've always "seen" it as a continuous fade... I never recall only percieving 6, 7 or any other number of bands. :/

      The whole concept of it as bands comes from culture for me. *shrug*
  • EwMo, on 05/14/2008, -4/+3There are SIX distinct colors in the rainbow. Indigo was added by the church so that it would become 7, which is much more a divine number than 6, and since God made the rainbow...

    Look at the rainbow, and also, intellectualize it. It makes looks like, and makes sense that, there are 6, not that there are 7...
    • DeviateSeptum, on 05/14/2008, -2/+1Thank you... the color "indigio" is totally bogus... I've never come across anyone who seriously claims to be able to clearly see it in the spectrum. And, yes, while there's a continuum of shades, there are six distinct categories of color in the spectrum. You and I and most the whole world agrees on this, and yet the author of the article makes the ROY G. BIV error.
  • tekproxy, on 05/14/2008, -4/+2The whole "do you see green where I see blue?" question is retarded if you think about it for more than a few seconds. Colors are not distinct and separate. One blends into another as a spectrum. You can't just swap green with blue. We all have about the same equipment, genetically. There are some women that can see four colors, and they definitely see different colors than the rest of us, but we all see about the same colors unless you have color blindness.

    There's actually a good evolutionary reason for color blindness. One theory is that we recently developed color perception (in evolutionary terms "recently" could mean many thousands of years) to help us discern ripe from unripe fruits (red and green, anyone?). Since there is little selective pressure for the expression of this gene, it's slowly becoming less common.
    • VinceNoir, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2You're looking at it the wrong way (no pun intended). It's a question of perception. The way the brain translates what it's given can vary quite a lot between people. Colors are just the start of it. In fact I would suggest that some people see giant walking chickens when they look at other people. Complete with feathers. But because they've assigned arbitrary terms to the beings they see, they call them human just as you or I do. But frankly, my human, might be your dog. My perception of walking on all four legs might be your perception of walking on two legs, or delivering the mail.

      With that way of thinking in mind, take this single sentence and parse it more flexibly:

      "See Spot run".

      Most westerners have been conditioned to picture a black dog named spot running on the sidewalk of a suburban street. But, it's entirely possible and completely likely that my "Spot" that I'm seeing looks like your Jenna Jameson. And it's also possible that the activity of "running" as I perceive it, might be your perception of piloting a plane over the Bermuda Triangle. That would go a long way to explaining why some people screw their dogs. (Not you of course) Hopefully I've brought some clarity to the discussion.
      • lpse2000, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1I can see colors being perceived by one's brain differently than another's brain, but not physical attributes. When someone paints a picture of someone sitting down, they paint it as you see it don't they?
      • TheGhostMan, on 05/16/2008, -0/+0Dude, you are an idiot.
      • Melatinini, on 05/25/2008, -0/+0I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not...

        At first, I was going to say that to some extent (whether you believe in an objective reality or not), things are either 'physically present' or 'not,' and the confirmation that what one sees as a 'dog' would be what someone else draws as a 'dog' would be easily achieved through other senses, most notably touching. But then I had to take into account the fact that hallucinations of all different senses exist (phantom limbs are a good example of the mind's fairly common tendency to err in even the sense of touch.)

        But this is becoming far too Cartesian and "reality is entirely subjective!" for me.
    • lpse2000, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Our DNA intelligently manipulated itself so that we would develop perception of color in order to determine ripe from unripe fruit?
    • Melatinini, on 05/25/2008, -0/+0You're right that it's a spectrum, but nevertheless -- the "is your 'purple' my 'yellow'?" question is legitimate because between ANY TWO COLORS there exists a spectrum. So, if someone's purple is someone else's yellow, the two are just swapped on the spectrum, and all of the intermediate colors are also different -- although I suppose in the blue/green example, the basic spectrum would go "red-orange-yellow-blue-green-purple" and the part of the spectrum between blue and yellow would include the "green" that supposedly follows blue. So the situation would only work in some cases: maybe the interchanging of primary colors? Hmmm...
  • eanbowman, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1As an aside: Have you ever had that conversation with a significant other where you both argue over which colour something is? I've run into a few people who have experienced this. I suppose that's the most tangible evidence that men and women perceive colours differently :P

    It's blue! No it's grey! >_<

    Maybe the languages where blue and green are indistinguishable were made to combat this? XD
  • leetleo, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
  • neko, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2I think the only way to clarify this would be:

    Do we see colours differently? No, pretty much the same frequencies get registered.
    Do we perceive colours differently? Probably. But there's no way to prove it without getting inside your head.
    • intangible, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2In yer head perceiving yur colorz?
  • universltravlr, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1But 4 month-old infants have unmyelinated serotonin systems, a system essential for sensory processing, so not sure they are the best to use in this type of study
  • CaptainHarlock, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1They certainly do! I ripped the eyes out of this baby once to make a flesh mask. Freakin' In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida!
  • Literaturfan, on 05/20/2008, -0/+0Thats clear. There are different concepts of expression and therefore also for perception. Think of the 10 different words Eskimos have for our single world "snow"
  •  

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