ArticleScientific reports2021
Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- An inverse correlation between structural linguistic and human genetic diversity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Adjectives improve color perception in visually impaired people through multisensory stimulation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- A computational analysis of lexical elaboration across languages.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Conceptual structure of emotions.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Color appearance and the end of Hering's Opponent-Colors Theory.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2023Review
- Hearing and Cognition in Childhood.Laryngo- rhino- otologie · 2023Article
- Sunlight exposure cannot explain "grue" languages.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Reply to: Sunlight exposure cannot explain "grue" languages.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Ultraviolet light affects the color vocabulary: evidence from 834 languages.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Evidence for a Shared Instrument Prototype from English, Dutch, and German.Cognitive science · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many languages express 'blue' and 'green' under an umbrella term 'grue'. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.