Yellow in Color Naming and Matching: Lexical Concentration and Local Convergence in Delayed Matching

Abstract

Abstract

ABSTRACT Yellow is an established color category despite being generated by a mixture of primaries on RGB displays. We examined its lexical accessibility, representative‐color selections, and matching accuracy using two complementary tasks. A web‐based survey asked participants to list 10 color terms and select their best representatives from a 64‐field RGB grid. Analyses included English, German, Latvian, and Slovenian samples, comprising 396 participants. Yellow was frequently listed and showed concentrated selections in all four samples, although red was similarly concentrated in some samples and had higher cognitive salience. In a separate experiment, 32 participants matched 40 positions along a display‐generated color sequence, either after a 10‐s delay or while the target remained visible. Spectroradiometric characterization confirmed strongly non‐uniform color spacing. Expressing target–response differences in CIEDE2000 units showed that direct matching and delayed reproduction remained accurate around target where the red and green RGB channels were both maximal [RGB (1,1,0); Target 26, yellow], and a central tendency toward yellow was observed for neighboring targets. Yellow therefore combined lexical accessibility and concentrated exemplar selection with accurate simultaneous matching, and a central tendency in delayed reproduction.