Categorical effects of color perception in central and peripheral fields of view

This article is devoted to research of the categorical color perception in different parts of the visual field as a part of the general problem of linguistic determination of color perception. The main hypothesis is that the change in visual angle at the presentation of color stimuli influences the categorical effects of color perception. The study included 60 children. The basic experimental procedure was carried out in computer program based on the visual search paradigm. We compared time of the between- and within-category color distinction at three conditions of the visual angle in three different color diapasons. The results showed that the categorical effects of color perception occur when the stimuli locate in the field of clear vision (5°). Categorical effects disappeared when value of retinal declination was 15 or 25°. The results show decrease of total reaction time with increasing values of the visual angle, i.e. the speed of reaction was faster when color stimuli appeared in peripheral vision. Additional we have studied the presence of categorical effects in border and focal colors. The study showed that categorical effects occur only at border colors in the field of clear vision. We have seen no categorical effect at the focal colors regardless of visual angle.