Roger W. Brown
Harvard University
and Eric H. Lenneberg
Center for International Studies,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“It is popularly believed that reality is present in much the same form to all men of sound mind.”
Brown and Lenneberg proposed that colors with short, agreed upon names — focal colors — are more available to the mind than colors that are identified with a longer phrase, and that availability will show up in memory tasks. They found that ease of naming predicts ease of recognition.
What follows is their experiment with you as the participant. It has two parts: First, you will name twelve colors, and the time it takes to name each one will be recorded. Then after a delay, you will try to pick out four of them again as a test of memory.
Part I. Name each color as you would to someone who has to pick it out later. Part II. Four colors are shown briefly; after an interval filled with arithmetic, you will look for them in a larger array.
1 A classroom replication of Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H., “A Study in Language and Cognition,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (1954), pp. 454–462. Your responses are anonymous and are compiled for discussion in class.