Number synaesthesia: when hearing "four plus five" looks like gold.

Full Abstract

Whilst lexical-colour synaesthesia has been widely studied, the number-colour pairing has received relatively less attention. Since one very strong variable is the structure and "ordinality" within a set of inducers (e.g., letters of the alphabet, days of the week and months of the year), the inherent hierarchy of numbers suggests that number-synaesthesia should be found in most synaesthetes. Three synaesthetes were recruited who showed between 80 and 100% consistency of synaesthetic responses to a set of stimuli across a three month interval. Their synaesthesia for numbers was investigated using an extension of Dixon et al.'s (2000) "2 plus 5 equals yellow" paradigm. Participants saw single digits and operators for an arithmetic process followed by a coloured square which was either congruent or incongruent with their individual colour for the answer; the task was to name the colour followed by stating the solution to the arithmetic sum. To see whether number-processing synaesthesia extends beyond the visual domain into the auditory domain the same procedure was used with the digits and operators being presented aurally. Relative to age-matched controls congruency effects were found for the synaesthetes. These findings add to the suggestion that synaesthesia can occur at a conceptual level where physical experience of an inducer is not necessary. Additionally, the findings showed that for one synaesthete there was a statistical difference in the auditory but not visual condition whilst for the remaining two synaesthetes, the reverse pattern was observed. This variable pattern adds to the body of literature that further illustrates the heterogeneity of synaesthesia. The findings are incorporated into Rich and Mattingley's (2002) neurocognitive model of synaesthesia and observations which cannot yet be explained are highlighted as future directions for research.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Jansari, Ashok S (AS); Spiller, Mary Jane (MJ); Redfern, Steven (S);

Affiliation: School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK. a.jansari(-atsign-)uel.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

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 253-8

Dates: Created 2006/05/10; Completed 2006/09/07;

PMID: 16683499, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Attention
Awareness
Color Perception
Female
Humans
Male

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

Primes and targets in rapid chases: tracing sequential waves of motor activation. 29 Sep 2006
Parallel central processing between tasks: evidence from lateralized readiness potentials. 30 Jan 2007
Residual cognitive impairments in remitted depressed patients. 30 Dec 2007
Noradrenergic neuromodulation of human attention for emotional and neutral stimuli. 28 Nov 2007
Hypothyroidism and major depression: a common executive dysfunction? 29 Jun 2006
Spatial working memory deficits in autism. 30 Mar 2007
Cardiovascular reactivity to mental stress is not affected by alpha2-adrenoreceptor activation or inhibition. 15 Nov 2006
The effect of aging in recollective experience: the processing speed and executive functioning hypothesis. 21 Jan 2007
A developmental fMRI study of nonsymbolic numerical and spatial processing. 21 Dec 2007
Aging and comparative search for feature differences. 30 Aug 2006

See 100+ related articles.