The Comparison of Object Color Knowledge Between Congenitally Blind and Sighted People

What role does perception play in human cognition? This is an important question in the research area of psychology. The current study aimed at exploring the influence of visual perceptual experience on human color cognition, by comparing the differences in behavioral and neuropsychological responses between congenital-blind and normal-sighted participants. The current study employed a semantic-priming paradigm, and presented prime-target word pairs to the participants randomly, such as, /bai2se4/ (white) -/xue3hua1/ (snow), or /bai2se4/ (white) - /mei2tan4/ (coal). All participants were instructed to decide whether the color term and the color of the object were matched or not. Results showed that (1) congenital-blind participants had acquired some color knowledge, but they were not as good as the sighted participants. (2) Mismatched color relationships induced significant N400 effects in both of the two groups, with a left hemisphere asymmetry. (3) However, compared with the sighted group, the blind group exhibited stronger N400 effects (i.e., larger amplitude of the difference waveform) and shorter N400 peak latencies. The current study suggests that congenital blindness have induced some cognitive and neuropsychology adaptive changes in blind people, and first-hand visual perceptual experience is important to color cognition but may be not prerequisite.