The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
as regards blue and green thus indicates, though grossly exaggerating,
a real psychological fact, and in this way we have an explanation of
the curious fact that in widely separated parts of the world (at Torres
Straits, among the Esthonians at Rome, etc.) as civilization progressed
it was found necessary to borrow a word for blue from other languages.
There is almost complete harmony among a number of observers, now very
considerable, in many countries, showing that the colors children first
take notice of and recognize are red and yellow, most observers putting
red first. There is no true predilection for these colors at this early
age because the other colors do not yet seem to have been perceived.
At first, doubtless, all colors appear to the infant as light or dark,
white or black. That this is so is indicated by the experience of Dr.
George Harley, who at one period of his life, in order to cure an
injury to the retina caused by overwork at the microscope, resolutely
spent nine months in absolutely total and uninterrupted darkness. When
he emerged he found that, like an infant, he was unable to appreciate
distance by the eye, while he had also lost the power of recognizing
colors; for the first month all light colors appeared to him perfectly
white and all dark colors perfectly black. He fails to state the order
in which the colors reappeared to him. It is well recognized, however,
that eyes long unexposed to light become color-blind for all colors
except red. Preyer’s child in the fourth year was surprised that in the
twilight her bright blue stockings looked grey, while for some time
longer she always called dark green black. By the sixth year all colors
are seen and known with fair correctness. Among young children at this
age, so far as the evidence yet goes, red is rarely the preferred
color, this being more often yellow, green or blue. There is doubtless
room here for a great amount of individual difference, but on the whole
it appears that children prefer those colors which they have most
recently learnt to recognize, the colors which have all the charm of
novelty and newly-won possession. It is probable, too, that (as Groos
has also suggested) the stimulation of red is too painfully strong
in this stage of the development of the color sense to be altogether
pleasurable, in the same way that orchestral music is often only a
disturbing noise to children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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