LOCATING BASIC COLORS IN THE MUNSELL SPACE

This experiment extends the work of Boynton ann Olson by providing a replication of their OSA studies, but using the Munsell system. It aims to define the location of the eleven basic surface colours within Munsell space using a monolexemic colour naming technique, and to improve sampling from the red and neutral regions. A comparison of the Munsell and OSA results reveals that while the centroids obtained using the two systems correspond reasonably well, the Munsell focal samples have a much higher saturation than their OSA counterparts. This is undoubtedly due to the more restricted range of the OSA system and calls into question the status of the focal samples previously identified. The existence of Berlin and Kay's eleven basic colour categories is confirmed and their locations identified with Munsell colour space. (C) 1995 Wiley & Sons, Inc.