Abstractive models of Human memory, in cognitive psychology, suppose that color is represented at multiple levels: visual, semantic and lexical (Tanaka et al, 2001).

In this research we investigate color not as visual information but as a top-down knowlegde concerning a perceptive property (which is not exposed in the stimulus).

We compare response times in two decision tasks for a same set of black and white line drawings pictures : a chromatic decision task (subjects have to decide if the items are, in reality, yellow or green) and a categorial decision task (subjects have to decide if the items belong to the animal or to the fruit and vegetable category). The reaction times for the chromatic decision task are significatively longer than those for the categorial decision task. This result tends to show that color as top-down knowledge (about a perceptive attribute which is not exposed) is less salient than the category.