This study examines the cross‐cultural generality of Hering's (1878/1964) color‐opponent theory of color appearance. English‐speaking and Somali‐speaking observers performed variants of two paradigms classically used to study color‐opponency. First, both groups identified similar red, green, blue, and yellow unique hues. Second, 25 English‐speaking and 34 Somali‐speaking observers decomposed the colors present in 135 Munsell color samples into their component Hering elemental sensations—red,green,blue, yellow, white, and black—or else responded “no term.” Both groups responded no term for many samples, notably purples. Somali terms for yellow were often used to name colors all around the color circle, including colors that are bluish according to Hering's theory. Four Somali Grue speakers named both green and blue elicitation samples by their term for green. However, that term did not name the union of all samples called blue or green by English speakers. A similar pattern was found among three Somali Achromatic speakers, who called the blue elicitation sample black or white. Thus, color decomposition by these Somali‐speaking observers suggests a lexically influenced re‐dimensionalization of color appearance space, rather than a simple reduction of the one proposed by Hering. Even some Somali Green‐Blue speakers, whose data were otherwise similar to English, showed similar trends in yellow and blue usage. World Color Survey data mirror these results. These within‐ and cross‐cultural violations of Hering's theory do not challenge the long‐standing view that universal sensory processes mediate color appearance. However, they do demonstrate an important contribution of language in the human understanding of color.

中文翻译：

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检验赫林色相理论的跨文化普遍性

本研究检验了 Hering (1878/1964) 的颜色反对者颜色外观理论的跨文化普遍性。讲英语和讲索马里语的观察者进行了两种经典用于研究色彩对立的范式的变体。首先，两组都确定了相似的红色、绿色、蓝色和黄色的独特色调。其次，25讲英语和34索马里发言权的观察员分解的颜色呈现135个蒙赛尔颜色样本成其组成元素赫林sensations-红，绿，蓝，黄，白，黑-or其他回答“没有期限。” 两组都没有回答对于许多样品，尤其是紫色。黄色的索马里语术语通常用于命名色环周围的颜色，包括根据赫林的理论呈蓝色的颜色。四位索马里格鲁语使用者以绿色术语命名了绿色和蓝色诱导样本。然而，该术语并没有命名所有被英语使用者称为蓝色或绿色的样本的联合。在三个索马里消色差扬声器中发现了类似的模式，他们将蓝色激发样本称为黑色或白色. 因此，这些讲索马里语的观察者进行的颜色分解表明，在词汇上影响了颜色外观空间的重新维度化，而不是对 Hering 提出的简单减少。甚至一些说索马里绿蓝双语的人，他们的数据在其他方面与英语相似，在黄色和蓝色的使用上也表现出类似的趋势。世界色彩调查数据反映了这些结果。这些对赫林理论的内部和跨文化的违反并没有挑战普遍感觉过程调节颜色外观的长期观点。然而，它们确实证明了语言在人类理解颜色方面的重要贡献。