How Color Blindness Can Affect Information Retention

The ability to retain information is a vital component of schooling. But there are certain factors that can affect how well a person retains information, and unfortunately, if those factors are a hindrance, learning can be difficult, regardless of intellect. One such factor that can play a role in information retention is a person’s ability to perceive color.

Color plays a huge role in learning because of the way the brain uses it in pattern recognition, memory retention and the absorption of new memories. The ability to distinguish colors can also help to visually guide a student during a lesson. For children, color also has the ability to affect moods, behaviours, and how well they do in school. Different colors each have their own effects as well – which can make it that much more difficult for those who are color blind to learn effectively.

Let’s take a look at how color blindness can affect information retention, and what you can do to make learning easier for a child who is color blind.

What is color blindness?
Color blindness is the term used to describe a person’s inability to see colors the way they actually are. Though the term may seem to convey that a person sees no color at all, it is rare that a person only sees shades of black and white. The most common type of color blindness doesn’t indicate a lack of color, but rather a deficiency in seeing the difference between certain colors.

What types of color blindness are there? 
Color blindness is considered a genetic condition because it can be inherited from a person’s parents or bloodline. It is caused by a defect in the way light-sensitive retina cells respond to colors.

There are a few specific types of color blindness, one of which is complete color blindness. This is called monochromacy, or true color blindness, and occurs when a person cannot see any colors at all.

Red-green color blindness is the most common type, and causes a person to have difficulty distinguishing between red and green. There are four different kinds of red-green color blindness:

• Deuteranomaly. This type is the most common and is characterized by the color green appearing more red.
• Protanomaly. This type causes red colors to look more green and less bright than they are.
• Protanopia/Deuteranopia. These two types are characterized by a complete inability to differentiate between red and green. 

Blue-yellow color blindness is the less common version of the condition and causes people to be unable to differentiate between blue/green and yellow/red. There are two specific types of blue-yellow color blindness:

• Tritanomaly. This type causes difficulties distinguishing between blue and green and yellow and red.
• Tritanopia. This type is more advanced than tritanomaly in the sense that it involves more colors. It makes it hard for people to tell the difference between blue and green, purple and red, and yellow and pink. Colors may also look duller for those who have this type of color blindness.

What are the symptoms of color blindness?
Sometimes, people with color blindness have the deficiency without ever realising it. This is because it starts at birth, and it’s hard for children to recognise or explain that they don’t see colors the way everyone else does if the signs are not there to alert them to the condition. Typically, signs begin to pop up when children are learning about colors, or voice problems with everyday objects such as traffic lights or color-coded learning materials.

When can you tell if a child is color blind?

As mentioned above, some signs that a child is color blind will begin to appear around the time they’re learning their colors. Color blind children will become confused easily with color-coded assignments or other projects that require them to use color to identify certain things.

Other signs that can alert you to a possible case of color blindness include:

• Coloring objects with the wrong colors (using purple for tree leaves, for example)
• A hindered attention span when asked to perform a task that involves coloring in worksheets
• Difficulties using the right colored writing utensil
• Smelling their food before they eat it
• An enhanced sense of smell
• Above average or excellent night vision
• Bright light sensitivity
• Complaints about headaches or eye pains while looking at something red with a green background or green with a red background

How is color blindness diagnosed?
To approach a possible case of color blindness, you will want to do it sensitively. This is because many children who are color blind will deny that they have anything wrong with their vision. Since those with red-green color blindness can still identify other colors such as yellow, orange, and pink, you can begin by creating a game that asks them to identify colors. If they have trouble with red or green but not the other colors, they can still feel as though they’re succeeding while you find out if they have color blindness.

Avoid over-questioning you child or testing their color vision abilities in front of others. The goal is to arrive to an answer, not make them feel stupid or ashamed for their lack of color vision.

Following your at-home test, you can follow up with an eye doctor, who will perform a similar type of exam that uses pictures with colored dots that have shapes or numbers of different colors inside them. Some of the patterns will be impossible or difficult to see for a person with color blindness, and this can help determine a diagnosis.

Does color blindness affect learning?
While color blindness doesn’t affect memory retention directly, it can in a way. One example would be if a child were tasked to remember which color was to be matched with a word. This could lead to them getting failing grades in those type of lessons, and thus, less academic confidence. When a student begins to feel as though they are not smart enough, they could then become frustrated or unmotivated to succeed in school.

Although color blindness does not affect intellect, it can make learning harder. This is because color is so often used in teaching materials and as an educational tool. When a child cannot distinguish colors, it can lead to frustration and the inability to learn as the rest of the class does.

Children who are color blind are often unsupported in the classroom from the beginning of their school years. This can lead to them believing that they aren’t as smart as their peers when in reality, they just need a little extra help.

Featured image by Ben Mullins on Unsplash