Development of Categorical Colour Perception in Children with Speech Disorders

The paper focuses on the features of categorical colour perception in children with speech disorders, situ- ating the issue within a wider context of the general problem of linguistic determination of colour perception. The principal hypothesis was that speech disorders have a selective delaying effect upon the development of intercategorical colour differentiation in children. The study involved 92 children aged 4—7 years with gener- al speech underdevelopment and a control group of 100 children of the same age with normal speech develop- ment. The experimental task included a computerized version of the visual search test; the time required for intercategorical and intracategorical colour recognition was then compared. The outcomes of the study revealed that speech disorders do slow down the development of categorical effects of colour perception: the differences in the time required for intercategorical and intracategorical tasks were less pronounced in the chil- dren with general speech underdevelopment than in those from the control group. In general, speech disorders mostly affect categorical colour perception in children at the age of 4—5, and then their impact gradually flat- tens as the child reaches the age of 7.

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