E Early Color Lexicons ▶ Ancient Color Categories Early Expression of Color in Language ▶ Ancient Color Categories Eco-/Genotoxicity of Synthetic Dyes ▶ Colorant, Environmental Aspects Effect of Color Terms on Color Perception Jonathan Winawer and Nathan Witthoft Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Synonyms Categorical perception; Linguistic influences on color perception; Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Definition The possibility that naming colors, either in a single instance or habitually over a lifetime, alters color perception. Color Perception and Color Communication When we communicate about the colors of scenes and objects comprising our visual experience, what we see informs our choice of words. A question that has interested many cognitive psychologists is whether the color words we use affect how we see. One view is that naming is for communication and has no effect on how we see or experience the world. In this view, color appearance, and therefore performance on tasks which strictly depend on color appearance, is determined entirely by the visual system and not at all by the language that one speaks. Color vision is informationally encapsulated, its output is automatically produced, and while its output is available for cognitive processes like decision making and speaking, higher cognitive processes cannot alter its process [1]. This can be contrasted with the idea that the very act of naming a color, either in a single instance or habitually over a lifetime, can change one’ s perceptual experience with the result that colors assigned with the same label (i.e., belonging to the same color category) are more similar than colors assigned with # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 M.R. Luo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology , DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8071-7