OBSERVATIONS ON THE COLOR-SENSE OF A CHILD. 



WILIBALD A» NAGEL, 



Professor of Physiology in the Uiii-uersity of Berlin. 



Published observations on the color-sense of young children 

 have not been numerous.^ Since the accounts, furthermore, are 

 in not a few^ points contradictory, one may indeed say that our 

 positive knowledge in this subject is still very incomplete and that 

 new observations are greatly needed. 



It is obvious, since the psychic life as a whole develops more 

 quickly in some people than in others, that th'ere must be large 

 individual differences in the age at which colors are first correctly 

 named. Whether the actual ability to distinguish colors (Farben- 

 unterscheidungsvermogen) likewise shows similar differences 

 may be doubtful ; we have, indeed, no indication whatever that 

 there is such a thing as an evolution of the color-sense in the 

 individual, nor does opinion, now-a-days, at all incline toward the 

 assumption of a development of the color-sense from a simpler to 

 a more complex form, or, specifically, from partial color-blindness 

 to normal color-vision. 



No one perhaps would now venture to assume, as fmany for a 

 while believed, that color-blindness could result from the neglect 

 of the color-sense in childhood, although there may be those who 

 think that a "weak color sense" or that which has received the 

 name of "color stupidity" (Farbendummheit) may be traced back 

 to that cause. We must, however, dismiss the thought of such a 

 causal reference, as we learn more and more to see that even these 

 lesser disturbances in the color sense are not, in most cases, to be 

 understood as undefined criteria of a general uncertainty in the 

 power to distinguish colors, but rather as sharply defined types of 

 color vision. 



'A bibliography of the various investigations of the color sense of young children is to be found 

 in Preyer's book, "Die Seele des Kindes," 5th edition, edited by K. L. Schaefer, Leipzig, 1900. 



