Synaesthesia is associated with enhanced, self-rated visual imagery

Barnett, Kylie J.; Newell, Fiona N.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.05.011

Cited by 116 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Group differences in intensity of mental imagery were, however, too small to be convincing. Barnett and Newell (2008) emphasized such a difference, but the magnitude of their reported difference was in fact at about the same level ( d = [0, 0.9]) as ours ( d = [−0.3, 0.7]), and may have been overestimated due to a sex bias (see Introduction). Spiller et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

“…However, if we consider that there should not be sex differences in the general population, this illustrates the susceptibility of small samples to spurious findings, especially when recruitment might not be strictly identical. This fact not only begs a cautious interpretation of group differences in our own small sample, it also weakens the conclusions we can draw from any study – regardless of sample size – that did not examine possible sex effects, especially as females are often recruited at a higher rate than males (e.g., Banissy et al ., 2013; Barnett & Newell, 2008; Ward et al ., 2008). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2008) suggested that visual imagery may be associated with both creativity and synesthesia. One study (Barnett & Newell, 2008) examined self‐reported vividness of mental imagery in synesthetes recruited from national media advertisements ( n = 38), their first‐degree relatives ( n = 22), and controls recruited from a university ( n = 38). Synesthetes reported slightly more vivid mental imagery than controls ( d = [0, 0.9]), with their relatives’ scores intermediate to the two groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Are synesthetes exceptional beyond their synesthetic associations? A systematic comparison of creativity, personality, cognition, and mental imagery in synesthetes and controls

Chun

Hupé

2015

British J of Psychology

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Synesthesia has historically been linked with enhanced creativity, but this had never been demonstrated in a systematically recruited sample. The current study offers a broad examination of creativity, personality, cognition, and mental imagery in a small sample of systematically recruited synesthetes and controls (n = 65). Synesthetes scored higher on some measures of creativity, personality traits of absorption and openness, and cognitive abilities of verbal comprehension and mental imagery. The differences were smaller than those reported in the literature, indicating that previous studies may have overestimated group differences, perhaps due to biased recruitment procedures. Nonetheless, most of our results replicated literature findings, yielding two possibilities: (1) our study was influenced by similar biases, or (2) differences between synesthetes and controls, though modest, are robust across recruitment methods. The covariance among our measures warrants interpretation of these differences as a pattern of associations with synesthesia, leaving open the possibility that this pattern could be explained by differences on a single measured trait, or even a hidden, untested trait. More generally, this study highlights the difficulty of comparing groups of people in psychology, not to mention neuropsychology and neuroimaging studies. The requirements discussed here – systematic recruitment procedures, large battery of tests, and large cohorts – are best fulfilled through collaborative efforts and cumulative science.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Are synesthetes exceptional beyond their synesthetic associations? A systematic comparison of creativity, personality, cognition, and mental imagery in synesthetes and controls

Chun

Hupé

2015

British J of Psychology

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“…Additional mental 555 experiences such as these accompanying color sensations to graphemes raised the question 556 whether synesthetes generally have more vivid imagery. Indeed, there is evidence supporting 557 this hypothesis from subjective reports (Barnett & Newell, 2008;Price, 2009 found different brain activation for each of the two phenomena. However, considering that 560 they used the mental hue comparison task to measure color imagery one might raise the same 561 criticism as discussed above.…”

Section: Participants 552mentioning

confidence: 64%

Colors in mind: A novel paradigm to investigate pure color imagery.

Wantz¹,

Mast²,

Lobmaier³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Mental color imagery abilities are commonly measured using paradigms that involve naming, judging, or comparing the colors of visual mental images of well-known objects (e.g., “Is a sunflower darker yellow than a lemon”?). Although this approach is widely used in patient studies, differences in the ability to perform such color comparisons might simply reflect participants’ general knowledge of object colors rather than their ability to generate accurate visual mental images of the colors of the objects. The aim of the present study was to design a new color imagery paradigm. Participants were asked to visualize a color for 3 s and then to determine a visually presented color by pressing 1 of 6 keys. We reasoned that participants would react faster when the imagined and perceived colors were congruent than when they were incongruent. In Experiment 1, participants were slower in incongruent than congruent trials but only when they were instructed to visualize the colors. The results in Experiment 2 demonstrate that the congruency effect reported in Experiment 1 cannot be attributed to verbalization of the color that had to be visualized. Finally, in Experiment 3, the congruency effect evoked by mental imagery correlated with performance in a perceptual version of the task. We discuss these findings with respect to the mechanisms that underlie mental imagery and patients suffering from color imagery deficits.

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“…Indeed, brain-imaging studies conducted among synesthetic participants have provided evidence identifying brain regions important for colo r perception (Hubbard, Arman, Ramachandran, & Boynton, 2005;Nunn et al, 2002;Sperling, Prvulovic, Linden, Singer, & Stirn, 2006). Synesthesia may also provide insight for understanding various aspects of cognition, including mental imaging (Barnett & Newell, 2008), memory (Luria, 1968;Tammet, 2006), art and creativity (Rich, Bradshaw, & Mattingley, 2005;Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001), and numeracy (Rich et al, 2005).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Database of synesthetic color associations for Japanese kanji

2016

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Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which certain types of stimuli elicit involuntary perceptions in an unrelated pathway. A common type of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia, in which the visual perception of letters and numbers stimulates the perception of a specific color. Previous studies have often collected relatively small numbers of grapheme-color associations per synesthete, but the accumulation of a large quantity of data has greater promise for uncovering the mechanisms underlying synesthetic association. In this study, we therefore collected large samples of data from a total of eight synesthetes. All told, we obtained over 1000 synesthetic colors associated with Japanese kanji characters from each of two synesthetes, over 100 synesthetic colors form each of three synesthetes, and about 80 synesthetic colors associated with Japanese hiragana, Latin letters, and Arabic numerals from each of three synesthetes. We then compiled the data into a database, called the KANJI-Synesthetic Colors Database (K-SCD), which has a total of 5122 colors for 483, 46, and 46 Japanese kanji, hiragana, and katakana characters, respectively, as well as for 26 Latin letters and ten Arabic numerals. In addition to introducing the K-SCD, this article demonstrates the database's merits by using two examples, in which two new rules for synesthetic association, Bshape similarity^and Bsynesthetic color clustering,^were found. The K-SCD is publicly accessible (www.cv.jinkan. kyoto-u.ac.jp/site/uploads/K-SCD.xlsm) and will be a valuable resource for those who wish to conduct statistical analyses using a rich dataset in order to uncover the rules governing synesthetic association and to understand its mechanisms.

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Synaesthesia is associated with enhanced, self-rated visual imagery

Cited by 116 publications

References 37 publications

Are synesthetes exceptional beyond their synesthetic associations? A systematic comparison of creativity, personality, cognition, and mental imagery in synesthetes and controls

Are synesthetes exceptional beyond their synesthetic associations? A systematic comparison of creativity, personality, cognition, and mental imagery in synesthetes and controls

Colors in mind: A novel paradigm to investigate pure color imagery.

Database of synesthetic color associations for Japanese kanji

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