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Part of
Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language and beyond
Edited by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam and Galina V. Paramei
[Not in series 217] 2018
► pp. 107–122

Chapter 6
A Color Inference Framework

| University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA

As people interact with the world, they form associations between colors and concepts. These color-concept associations are dynamic: they continually update with new experiences, and they vary in relevance depending on contextual cues. In this chapter, I present the Color Inference Framework, a functional system, to describe how people form conceptual inferences from color information (color inferences) and how those inferences influence people’s judgements about the world. Within the Color Inference Framework, I define three kinds of cognitive operations – pooling, transmitting, and assigning – that act on the same mental representation (color-concept association network) to produce different kinds of evaluative and interpretive judgements. I also discuss empirical evidence in support of the Color Inference Framework.

Keywords: color cognition, visual reasoning, color preference, information visualization, Ecological Valence Theory, Color Inference Framework
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Color Inference Framework
    • 2.1Input: Perceptual and conceptual context
    • 2.2Color-concept association network
    • 2.3Operations and output
      • 2.3.1Pooling to produce evaluations of colors
      • 2.3.2Transmitting to produce evaluations of concepts
      • 2.3.3Assigning to produce interpretations about color-concept mappings
  • 3.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.06sch
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