Are colours special? An examination of the female advantage for speeded colour naming

When presented with a matrix of patches of colour, women name the colours faster than men do. This effect could be due to female superiority at perceiving colours, naming, scanning a visual array, or rapidly articulating the correct name. These possibilities were investigated by administering tests of colour naming, colour discrimination, shape naming, and articulatory speed to a sample of 44 students. Effects of visual scanning were controlled by administering one stimulus at a time. Females named both colours and shapes significantly faster than males, and this advantage did not appear to be due to a superiority in articulatory speed. Because the scores on the colour and shape naming tests were highly correlated, it appears as though the female advantage on colour naming is simply a manifestation of a more general superiority at speeded naming tasks, not a ‘special factor of colour naming’.