Is there a lateralized category effect for color?

Abstract

According to the lateralized category effect for color, the influence of color category borders on color perception in fast reaction time tasks is significantly stronger in the right visual field than in the left. This finding has directly related behavioral category effects to the hemispheric lateralization of language. Multiple succeeding articles have built on these findings. We ran ten different versions of the two original experiments with overall 230 naive observers. We carefully controlled the rendering of the stimulus colors and determined the genuine color categories with an appropriate naming method. Congruent with the classical pattern of a category effect, reaction times in the visual search task were lower when the two colors to be discriminated belonged to different color categories than when they belonged to the same category. However, these effects were not lateralized: They appeared to the same extent in both visual fields.