YOUNG children may colour trees blue or grass red because their memories can’t “bind” together the colour and shape of an object.
Because the brain stores colour and shape in different groups of neurons, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison suspected that young children have not yet developed the ability to link the information stored in each.
To test her hypothesis, she asked 28 four-year-olds and 28 five-year-olds to view images of up to three shapes on a computer screen for a short time. Immediately afterwards, the children were shown a new image, and asked whether it…
