Some things we have found out so far….

• Babies look longer at red, blue, purple and orange than green, yellow, pink and brown, and this does not change throughout infancy.
• Infant colour preference is associated with the order in which toddlers learn colour names.
• Babies can categorise primary (e.g. blue, green, red) and secondary (e.g. pink, purple) colours by four-months old.
• Babies use the right side of their brain to categorise colour whilst adults use the left.
• Colour is categorised more strongly by the left side than the right side of the brain when toddlers learn the words for colours.

Current Research

Categorisation is a fundamental part of our mental life – we frequently group things into categories, allowing us to treat members of the same category equivalently.  For example, animals are grouped into categories (e.g., mammal, amphibian), as well as colours (e.g., red, green, blue), and sounds (loud, quiet).  We have recently found that, in adults, the left side of the brain contributes more to categorisation of colour than the right.  In contrast, for young infants, the right side of the brain contributes more to categorisation of colour than the left.  This research raises many questions about the contribution of the left and right side of the brain to categorisation across development. 

Our current study aims to see whether these differences between infants and adults are also found for other types of categorisation.   Babies are shown a series of images on a computer monitor.  Using a special eye-tracking camera we are able to see how long it takes for babies to spot the differences in the images when shown on the left and right side of the monitor.  Anything shown briefly on the left side of the monitor is initially processed by the right side of the brain and vice versa.  Therefore, we are able to see whether differences amongst the images are detected more quickly by the left or right side of the brain.

Would you like your child to take part in the study? 
Click here to find out how.