152 COLOUR VISION 



CHAPTER IV 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLOUR VISION IN THE CHILD 



Darwin^ first pointed out that the power of distinguishing colours 

 is a very late accomplishment in childhood ; he found that his children 

 were unable to name colours correctly at an age when they knew the 

 names of most common objects. Preyer^ made many investigations 

 on one child. Various methods were attempted without very encourag- 

 ing results. Up to the third year it was found impossible to hold the 

 attention of the child sufiiciently long to obtain concordant results by 

 such methods as sorting out coloured wools, cards, etc. or naming different 

 colours. In 1897^ Preyer drew attention to a more successful device 

 for naming colours. Children of an early age show no facility for 

 comprehending abstract terms. It was found, however, that interest 

 could be awakened by association of different colours with concrete 

 objects. Thus Mrs Stanley Hall's son^ in the forty-sixth week of life 

 called all black objects " Kitty," because a black cat was so named. 

 The method does not seem to have been much used and could only be 

 employed at a period when probably the colour sense is already fully 

 developed. 



Garbini^ made observations on 600 children. Both Preyer and 

 Garbini agree that the child is unable to distinguish colours until to- 

 wards the end of the second year, and that red is distinguished and 

 named correctly at an earlier age than blue. Garbini emphasises the 

 fact that the power of distinguishing colours develops earlier than that 

 of naming them, and these early experiments give evidence of little 

 beyond that fact, for the methods were not suited to determining the 

 earliest age of colour discrimination at all accurately. 



Methods better adapted to this purpose have been employed by 

 Baldwin^, Marsden'^, Shinn^, McDougalP, Myers^^ and Valentine^^. 



1 Kosmos, I. 376, 1877. ^ j)i^ g^^ig ^^g Kindes, Leipzig, 1881. 



3 Ztsch.f. P.-iyckol. u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorg. xiv. 231, 1897. 



■* The Child-Study Monthly, ii. 460, 1897. 



^ Arch, per V Antro-pologia e la Etnologia, xxiv. 71, 193, 1894. 



* Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Chap. ni. 3rd ed. London, 1906. 

 ' Psychol. Rev. x. 37, 1903. 



* The Development of the Senses in the First Three Years of Childhood, 148. 

 9 Brit. J I. of Psychol, n. 338, 1908. " Ibid. ii. 353, 1908. 

 " Ibid. vj. 363, 1914. 



