The subjects were preschool children aged 2.5-3 years. There were 100 little girls and 100 little boys. All were children of blue collar workers. ninety of the children had English as a second language. The experiment was conducted in English. They tasted 10 ml. samples of 400 mm Nacl, 300 mm sucrose, 200 um quinine sulfate and mm citric acid. All were made from reagent grade chemicals (Zocor chemicals lnc., Fresno, ca.), dissolved in distrilled water.
They were given toy animals made of plastic (farmyard pets, Conderbrats, lnc. Anaheim, CA)in standard colors matched to munsell color numbers. They were :
ANIMAL COLOR MUNSELL COLOR NUMBER
Dog black 9.0y1.1
Cat blue 4.5 pb33
Sheep green 5.0 g5
Pig yellow 4.4y8.7
Cow brown 5.0yr3
Chicken red 5.0r5
Colors were named well than tastes. No children could name any of the tastes correctly, even using most liberal of interpretation. The number of children who named colors correctly are given below.
NUMBER OF COLORS NUMBER OF CHILDREN
0 140
1 20
2 20
3 18
4 2