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UC Irvine professors receive $410,000 to investigate the evolution of color categorization behaviors
Researchers with the UC Irvine Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences (IMBS) have received a $410,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the evolution and use of color naming systems in societies of simulated individuals.
Employing formal methods widely used in economic evolutionary game theory, the team will investigate simulated color categorization behaviors to shed light on unanswered theoretical and empirical issues in cross-cultural human color naming research. By studying specific features underlying the evolution of psychological color categories, their investigations will address whether color semantics from both simulated and real populations, for example, capture color environment information efficiently, and how efficient semantic codes might evolve when variation in color perception subgroups exists. The research also has industrial applications to situations involving colonies of robots evolving linguistic categorization schemes for efficient communication among themselves and for translation into human languages.
The research team includes IMBS members Natalia Komarova PI, associate professor of mathematics, and co-PI's Kimberly A. Jameson, associate project scientist, Louis Narens professor of cognitive sciences, and Ragnar Steingrimsson, assistant project scientist. The study will cover a three year period beginning September 2007.
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