Automatic perception and synaesthesia: evidence from colour and photism naming in a stroop-negative priming task.

Full Abstract

It is widely assumed that synaesthetic perception is highly automatic, as shown by Stroop test. Furthermore, it has been shown that, although automatic, it can be suppressed leading to Negative Priming (NP). However, these assumptions have not been consistently investigated, as not many papers have measured Stroop in synaesthesia, and only one used a NP procedure. Two experiments were carried out in a female synaesthete (MA), and 13 control participants, in which numbers and letters were displayed in colours either congruent or incongruent with MA's photisms. In contrast to control participants, MA showed significant Stroop effect both when naming the colours and when naming the photisms (slower RT when naming a colour or photism that was incongruently coloured versus congruently coloured). For comparison, we also report a control experiment in which the first letters of colour names were displayed in either congruent (e.g., B in blue) or incongruent (e.g., B in red) colours. Significant Stroop and NP effects were found when a control group named the displayed colour of these letters. The synaesthesic Stroop effect shown by MA was greater than that observed in the Control Experiment when MA was to name the displayed colour, but smaller when she was to name the photism of the stimuli. Regarding NP, MA showed an effect similar to that observed in the Control Experiment, but only when she was to name the photisms of the stimuli. Altogether, these results show that synaesthetic perception is highly automatic and difficult to inhibit.

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Author information

Author/s: Lupiáñez, Juan (J); Callejas, Alicia (A);

Affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psycology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain. jlupiane(-atsign-)ugr.es

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior (Cortex), published in Italy. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Feb; vol 42 (issue 2) : pp 204-12

Dates: Created 2006/05/10; Completed 2006/09/07; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 16683494, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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