Abstract: Color cognition is a key issue on the debates of Linguistic Universalism and Relativity. Universalists declare that color cognition is independent with language and culture, is human’s common cognition ability, and will not be affected by language and culture. Whereas, Relativitists state that color cognition is affected by language and culture. Relativitists put forward four aspects of evidence to oppose Universalism, that is, data analyzing, ‘blue’ and ‘green’ cognition, cross-species researches and neuropsychological founding. However, Universalists doubted that whether the effects of language and culture on color cognition are direct or indirect. That is, does language and culture change color cognition perceptually or just assist people to finish tasks as an online strategy? This study was probe into the relationship between ‘black’/‘white’ cultures and ‘black’/‘white’ color cognition to investigate whether the different ‘black’/‘white’ cultures of Yi nation, Bai nation, Naxi nation and Han nation would influence the ‘black’/‘white’ color discrimination of people from these four nations, and to explore whether these language and culture effects are direct or indirect.
There were two experiments in this study. Eighty-eight participants of Yi, Bai, Naxi and Han Nations from Yunnan Dali Institute took part in the experiments. Participants were asked to finish color similarity judgment in experiment 1 and finish color recognition task in experiment 2. Materials were selected according to CIE1976 L*a*b* and consisted of 7 ‘black’ and 7 ‘white’ stimulus which were all the same on wavelength and saturation (a* = b* = 0) but different on lightness. In experiment 1, there were three colors presented at the same time on the screen in every trial. Subjects were asked to judge which color was more similar with the color presented on the center of the screen, the color on the left side or right side. In experiment 2, subjects were asked to memorize the target color, and to recognize it 30s later by choosing it from two colors. All data were analyzed by SPSS10.0.
The results of experiment 1 showed that undergraduates from Yi Nation discriminated black stimulus with different lightness significantly faster and more accurate than discriminated the white ones, while subjects from Bai Nation distinguished white colors with different lightness notably faster and more accurate than distinguished the black ones. Participants from Naxi Nation had no significant difference when they discriminated different lightness ‘black’ and ‘white’. Neither did students from Han Nation. The results in experiment 2 found the same tendency with experiment 1 except that the difference between ‘black’ and ‘white’ discrimination in every nation enlarged on both reaction time and error ratio.
The whole study showed that ⑴ the culture differences on ‘black’ and ‘white’ of Yi, Bai, Naxi and Han Nation affected the color ‘black’ and ‘white’ discrimination of undergraduates from these four nations; ⑵ the effects of language and culture on color cognition include indirect effect and direct effect

Key words: Yi Nation, Bai Nation, Naxi Nation, Han Nation, color cognition