Color vision defectives' experience: When white is green

Abstract

Despite having difficulties in discriminating colors, individuals with a congenital color vision defect (CVD) sometimes identify colors correctly. One explanation for their correct use of the color name could be the context in which the color is used. In North America, how context influences the use of color names can be illustrated using the pedestrian signal light, where the color of the light indicating that it is safe to cross is white. Sixty color vision normals (CVNs) and 68 CVD subjects were asked to identify the color of the man figure icon from memory. All of the CVNs identified the figure correctly as white, whereas 56% of the CVDs identified the color of the man-figure incorrectly, with 92% of the errors identifying the color as green and the remaining 8% as yellow. No one identified the figure as red. The data show one example of how context plays a role in how CVDs identify colors.