2025-03-14 京都大学
実験結果の概要:スマートフォンを使った実験で、2つの色クオリアの類似性を判断してもらった。それぞれの色の類似性が高いと、図中の色同士の距離が近くなっている。幼児も大人も、PCもスマホも、オンラインも対面も、ほぼ同じような色クオリアの構造が見られた。
<関連情報>
- https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ja/research-news/2025-03-14
- https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/sites/default/files/2025-03/web_2503_Moriguchi-d091ebe5756d9e4551b2c4fcfecf980d.pdf
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415346122
幼児と成人の類似性課題による色彩クオリア構造の比較 Comparing color qualia structures through a similarity task in young children versus adults
Yusuke Moriguchi, Ryoichi Watanabe, Chifumi Sakata, +3 , and Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Published:March 11, 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2415346122
Significance
How do children perceive the world, and how does their conscious experience compare with that of adults? This question on children’s consciousness, rooted in Piaget’s theory, has been neglected in cognitive development research. We explored the qualitative aspects of conscious experience, or qualia, traditionally approached via introspective language, which has excluded young children as a target of the study. We introduced a paradigm via visual interfaces to engage children, and obtained color similarity judgments without complex instructions. Contrary to traditional beliefs, results revealed a striking similarity in the structure of subjective color experiences across ages and cultures, with subtle changes. Our study opens broad avenues for probing children’s subjective experiences and illuminating the universality and variability of color experience.
Abstract
Examination of the subjective qualitative aspects of an experience, or “qualia” in short, is a fundamental and core aspect of consciousness research. How can we characterize the particular quality of redness, i.e. a red quale? Based on a recent proposal of the structural characterization of qualia, which did not rely on verbal descriptions, we developed a task that obtained pairwise similarity judgments at four graded levels, with easy and intuitive visual interfaces designed to engage young children. We examined color qualia structures in children (3 to 12-y-old in Japan and 6 to 8-y-old in China) and compared these with those of Japanese adults. Approximately half of the assessed 3-y-old children completed the experiment via our touch panel device version of the task and had reliable responses. Despite known developmental and/or cultural effects of color term usage, we found that color qualia structures were quite similar across the age groups and cultures. Our finding supports the view that color qualia structures emerge early. We also observed age-related differences in the evaluations of some color pairs, which implied subtle changes in the structures behind color experience.
