Consistency and strength of grapheme-color associations are separable aspects of synesthetic experience |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Neurology, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033-0859, USA;2. Department of Neural & Behavioral Sciences, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033-0859, USA;3. Department of Psychology, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033-0859, USA;4. Department of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA;5. Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA;1. Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer- Sheva, Israel;2. Neuroimaging Center (NIC), Focus Program Translational Neuroscience, Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany;3. Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research, Wallstr. 7, 55122, Mainz, Germany;4. Department of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel;1. School of Psychology, Pevensey Building, University of Sussex, UK;2. Department of Psychology, Edinburgh Napier University, UK;3. Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK |
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| Abstract: | Consistency of synesthetic associations over time is a widely used test of synesthesia. Since many studies suggest that consistency is not a completely reliable feature, we compared the consistency and strength of synesthetes’ grapheme-color associations. Consistency was measured by scores on the Synesthesia Battery and by the Euclidean distance in color space for the specific graphemes tested for each participant. Strength was measured by congruency magnitudes on the Implicit Association Test. The strength of associations was substantially greater for synesthetes than non-synesthetes, suggesting that this is a novel, objective marker of synesthesia. Although, intuitively, strong associations should also be consistent, consistency and strength were uncorrelated, indicating that they are likely independent, at least for grapheme-color synesthesia. These findings have implications for our understanding of synesthesia and for estimates of its prevalence since synesthetes who experience strong, but inconsistent, associations may not be identified by tests that focus solely on consistency. |
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| Keywords: | Synesthesia Grapheme Color Implicit Association Test |
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