ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Gender-Dependent Color Discrimination Ability and Speed–Accuracy Tradeoff: Insights from ND-100 Hue Tests
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
- 2Japan Color Research Institute, Saitama, Japan
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This study is the first to systematically investigate how time pressure influences the speed–accuracy balance and decision processes involved in color discriminationthe effect of gender differences on color discrimination under extremely short time limits, addressing a key gap in understanding how time pressure shapes perceptual performance. We experimented with 356 university students (18–28 years) by performing the ND-100 hue test under four time constraints (120, 105, 90, and 75 s), with up to four trials per participant to reduce task-unfamiliarity effects. Females outperformed males under moderate time limits (90–120 s) by approximately 19.889-29.926in TES (Total error scores), whereas no significant gender difference was observed at 75 s (p =.918), indicating performance convergence under extreme time pressure. Females outperformed males under moderate time limits (90–120 s), whereas the performance converged under extreme time pressure (75 s). This study introduces three methodological innovations: the first use of a 75-s time limit to model high-pressure conditions, a fine-grained set of time limits to capture detailed performance changes, and multiple trials per participant to minimize task-unfamiliarity effects. Mechanistically, these effects reflect the dynamic interplay of biological predispositions (e.g., photopigment variation, P-cell density variation, and interhemispheric connectivity differences), experience-dependent perceptual plasticity, and adaptive cognitive strategies, with time pressure as a key modulator. Both sexes exhibited a speed–accuracy tradeoff, but females' performance declined more sharply under extreme constraints, highlighting differential reliance on analytical processing, experience-based strategies, and decision-threshold adjustments. Together, the innovations provide systematic evidence of gender differences under extreme temporal constraints; support an integrative triple-mechanism model that bridges biological, experiential, and cognitive effects; and offer practical implications for training, task design, and interface development in real-world settings requiring rapid color-based decisions.
Keywords: ND-100 hue test, Color association, Color discrimination, time limit, Vision
Received: 11 Oct 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qiao, Kawabata and Sasaki. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanan Qiao
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