Blind People Can’t See Color But Understand It Quite Similarly As Sighted People, Study Finds

News: People born blind have never seen the yellow color of bananas but like any sighted person they understand two bananas are likely to be the same color and why.

Johns Hopkins University researchers demonstrated that congenitally blind and sighted individuals actually understand it quite similarly, contradicting the popular belief that people born blind could never truly understand color.

The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Blind and sighted individuals also displayed the same depth of understanding in explaining why objects had certain colors, said lead author Judy Kim, a former Johns Hopkins graduate student who is now a postdoctoral associate at Yale University.

These people share similar intuitions about which objects will have consistent colors, make similar predictions for novel objects, and give similar explanations. Living among people who talk about color is sufficient for color understanding, highlighting the efficiency of linguistic communication as a source of knowledge.

To Know More You May Refer To:

Kim, J. S., Aheimer, B., Montané Manrara, V., & Bedny, M. (2021). Shared understanding of color among sighted and blind adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(33), e2020192118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020192118