Two psychophysical experiments were conducted to analyze the role of color attributes in simple tasks involving color matching and discrimination. In Experiment I observers made color matches using three different adjustment control methods. The results showed that the Lightness, Chroma, Hue (LCH) and the Lightness, redness/ greenness, blueness/yellowness ({L, r/g, y/b}) adjustment controls elicited significantly better performance than the display RGB controls in terms of both accuracy and time, but were not significantly different from each other. Expert observers performed significantly better than naive observers in terms of accuracy. Experiment II was a replication and extension of the experiment by Melgosa et al. [Color Res Appl 2000; 25: 356-367] in which observers judged differences and similarities for color attributes in pairs of colored patches. At a 95% confidence level, the results from judging difference were significantly better than those front judging similarity. Hue and Lightness were significantly more identifiable than Chroma, r/g, and y/b. These results indicate that people do not have ready access to the lower level color descriptors such as the common attributes used to define color spaces, and that higher level psychological processing involving cognition and language may be necessary for even apparently simple tasks involving color matching and describing color differences. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals. Inc.