The color communication game

There is clear diversity among speakers of a typical language in how colors are named. What is the impact of this diversity on the people’s ability to communicate about color? Is there a gap between a person’s general understanding of the color terms in their native language and how they understand a particular term that denotes a particular color sample? Seventy English-speaking dyads and 63 Somali-speaking dyads played the Color Communication Game, where the “sender” in each dyad named 30 color samples as they would in any color-naming study, then the “receiver” chose the sample they thought the sender intended to communicate. English speakers played again, under instructions to intentionally communicate color sample identity. Direct comparison of senders’ samples and receivers’ choices revealed categorical understanding of colors without considering color naming data. Although Somali-speaking senders provided fewer color terms, interpersonal Mutual Information (MI) calculated from color naming data was similarly below optimal for both groups, and English-speaking dyads’ MI did not improve with experience. Both groups revealed superior understanding of color terms because receivers showed better exactly-correct selection performance than was predicted by simulation from their senders’ color-naming data. This study highlights limitations on information-theoretic analyses of color naming data.