Abstract:
The present study explored how the visually impaired conceptualise colour relations. This was investigated through the application of individual differences multidimensional scaling, using participant’s numerical estimates between two colours as a proxy for similarity judgments. The study consisted of five groups: congenitally blind adults, adventitiously blind adults, congenitally blind young people, sighted adult controls, and sighted young controls. The results indicated that both congenitally and adventitiously blind adults produce 3-dimensional solutions resembling one another. The pattern revealed by the solutions demonstrated that blind adults categorise colours by metaphoric reference to temperature. We anticipated that adventitiously blind adults would create solutions similar to sighted controls as they once had visual experience of colour. We attributed this to the deterioration of visual memory following complete blindness. Surprisingly, congenitally blind young participants produced a 3-dimensional solution similar to sighted counterparts. The study focused on two notions to provide an explanation: The Whorfian hypothesis and cross-modal plasticity. The former defends that language determines cognitive processes; the later demonstrates that the brain undergoes neurological changes to compensate when one sensory modality is lost. By combining the two perspectives we argue that visually impaired individuals create conceptions of colours by semantic knowledge, however, individuals that are completely blind since birth may develop heightened senses which allows them to conceptualise colour categories as well as sighted people and those who could once see.
