The color communication game: how categorical understanding of colors can be shown without considering color naming data

Published Oct 31, 2024 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9bs

Abstract

There is clear diversity among speakers of a typical language in how colors are named. What is the impact of this diversity on people’s ability to communicate about color? Is there a gap between a person’s general understanding of color terms in their native language and how they use a particular term to denote a particular color sample? Seventy English-speaking dyads and 63 Somali-speaking dyads played the Color Communication Game, where the “sender” in each dyad named 30 color samples as they would in any color-naming study, then the “receiver” chose the sample they thought the sender intended to communicate. English speakers played again, under instructions to intentionally communicate color sample identity. Interpersonal Mutual Information (MI) calculated from color naming data was variable and below optimal, and English-speaking dyads’ MI did not improve with experience. Although Somali-speaking senders provided fewer color terms, both groups revealed a superior understanding of color terms because they showed better exactly correct selection performance as receivers than was predicted by simulation from their dyads’ color-naming data. Direct comparison of senders’ samples and receivers’ choices revealed a categorical understanding of colors without considering color naming data. This study highlights limitations on information-theoretic analyses of color naming data.

Angela M Brown*, The Ohio State University, brown.112@osu.edu *corresponding author
Delwin T. Lindsey, The Ohio State University at Mansfield, lindsey.43@osu.edu

Description of the data and file structure

This data folder contains three groups of data:

Experienced

Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Experienced-DyadPairings.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Experienced-ReceiverChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Experienced-ReceiverTerms.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Experienced-SenderChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Experienced-SenderTerms.csv

Naive

Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Naive-DyadPairings.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Naive -ReceiverChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Naive -ReceiverTerms.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Naive -SenderChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-EnglishData-Naive -SenderTerms.csv

Somali Data

Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-SomaliData-DyadPairings.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-SomaliData-ReceiverChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-SomaliData-ReceiverTerms.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-SomaliData-SenderChoices.csv
Brown-20230718-ColorCommunicationGame-SomaliData-SenderTerms.csv

These files contain:

The dyad pairings. These pairs of numbers are the sender and receiver record numbers for each dyad.
The sender color terms.
The receiver color terms.
The sender sample choices.
The receiver sample choices.
The rows of terms or choices are the data for each sample. Each page begins with a (bold type) column for the nominal designations of the 30 samples.

Further guidance for the data sets:

Somali data:

The Somali data set includes data from 97 participants, with each receiver being associated with exactly one sender
The columns are IDs for the participants
All analyses were performed on the full set of 97 {sender, receiver} dyads. Then, data from the first 34 dyads were eliminated for the final analyses
Responses of Somali-speaking participants consist of names of the colors in the Somali language, e.g., Madow=Black; Cagaar=Green; Huruud=Yellow, etc.
See Methods: Procedures: Somali-speaking players for details.

English native and experienced data:

The English data set includes data from 31 participants, with each receiver being associated with each of the other members of their group.
Thus, there are 31 self-data sets (self-terms and self-choices), one for each participant. The data from other terms and other choices are from other people in the self-payer group. These data define 70 dyads.
The dyad pairings tell you, for a given other dyad, which self-individual was the sender.

Sharing/Access information

N/A

Code/Software

The data are CSV files. They can be opened using any spreadsheet program (e.g., Excel) and they can be read by any computer software package. The Mathematica routine is an NB file and requires Mathematica to open and run it. We are also supplying it in RTF format.

The Mathematica Code files (.nb and .rtf) contain the Mathematica routine used to calculate Mutual Information from the color naming data. That routine takes as input the senderColorTerms and the corresponding receiverColorTerms from one of the data sets (e.g., SomaliSenderTerms and SomaliReceiverTerms) and returns the mutual information for those participants. The sender terms may be provided as both senderColorTerms and receiverColorTerms to obtain self-communication mutual information results.

The color communication game: how categorical understanding of colors can be shown without considering color naming data

Data files