Sussex University recruits babies for research into how young children see colour

The Sussex Baby Lab, which opened this year within the university's School of Psychology, is recruiting local children as young as four months old to take part in its current project on how babies see colour.

Researchers leading the Rainbow Project hope to study around 400 babies aged four to six months old over two years to determine how they group different colours.

A previous study by the Sussex Baby Lab found that babies know some colours belong together. For example, children at four months treat different greens, such as lime green and forest green, as if they are the same kind of colour.

By determining how babies group different colours, researchers hope to understand how they structure their visual world and the way in which this contributes to babies' thinking and learning, in particular the development of language.

So far, 60 babies have taken part in the project where they were shown a series of colours while researchers recorded what they looked at to find out whether they recognise changes in colour.

According to Sussex Baby Lab, babies who look at one thing more than another - 'preferential looking' - can tell the difference between two things. Babies who look at something new longer than something they have seen before - 'novelty preference' - can tell the difference between the familiar and the new thing.

Dr Anna Franklin, leader of the Sussex Baby Lab, said, 'We know from previous research that, contrary to popular belief, babies do see colour, even when they are newborns. Between birth and three months children's colour vision is developing. Three-quarters of infants can see red, which we think has something to do with evolution.

'What we want to know is how good babies are at noticing changes in colour and, in particular, we want to discover whether babies group colours in a similar way to adults. We are hoping the research will allow us to answer broader questions.'

The Rainbow Project is part of a bigger, five-year study entitled Categories, led by The Sussex Colour Group at the University of Sussex, and funded by the European Research Council, which will explore how humans know things belong to groups and how this leads to language.

A further study being carried out by the Sussex Colour Group will look at how two- to three-year-olds learn the words for colours. Dr Franklin said, 'I get emails from parents concerned that their babies are colour-blind as they are struggling to learn the words for different colours. For some reason children are able to learn the names of dinosaurs, but they find it tricky to learn words for colours. This doesn't mean they are colour-blind, as it has to do with their language development.'

• For more information about the Sussex Baby Lab and to take part in the research visit www.sussex.ac.uk/babylab or call 01273 873300.