Conceptualization of perceptual attributes: a special case for color?

Young children experience difficulties establishing conceptual representations of color compared with everyday objects. We argue that comparing the development of color cognition to that of familiar objects is inappropriate since color is a perceptual attribute that can be abstracted from an object and by itself lacks functional significance. Instead, we compared the recognition, perceptual saliency, and naming of color to that of three other perceptual object attributes (motion, form, and size) in 47 children aged 2 to 5 years as a function of language age. Results revealed that, although color was perceptually salient relative to the other visual attributes, no selective impairment to color cognition (recognition and naming) was found relative to the three other visual attributes tested. Thus, when the appropriate comparisons are made, we find no special delay in the development of color conceptualization. Furthermore, the striking disparity between perceptual saliency and cognition of color in our youngest age groups suggests that perceptual saliency has little influence on the conceptual development of color.