Some effects of color on naming and recognition of objects

In this article, we investigated the role of color in the recognition and naming of everyday objects. In the first experiment we found that color pictures were named faster than black-and-white and that shape information did not facilitate color naming. Experiment 2 was carried out to determine at which stage of object processing the color facilitation occurred. We found that color had no effect on object recognition but did facilitate object naming, even when color was redundant for discrimination. This did not apply to naming abstract shapes. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2 using different objects and colors. The results showed that color could facilitate but not inhibit object naming and did not affect object recognition.