Synaesthetic Colours Can Behave More like Recalled Colours, as Opposed to Physical Colours that Can Be Seen

Abstract

Grapheme-color synaesthesia is an atypical condition characterized by coloured sensations when reading achromatic text. Different forms have been characterized, but this is somewhat controversial. In associative grapheme-colour synaesthesia, written graphemes can automatically trigger a sensation of colour in the ‘mind's eye’, but hearing the name of a grapheme does not. This allowed us explore the precision with which synaesthetes match triggered synaesthetic colours across separate presentations, versus the precision for recalled experiences cued by spoken graphemes. We recorded CIE coordinates, and found that matches for triggered sensations were equally variable relative to recalled experiences. To ensure this was not due to insensitivity of our apparatus, we next had synaesthetes and age-matched controls either match the colour of a circular patch while they could see it, or from memory after it had disappeared. Both synaesthetes and controls were more variable when matching from memory, and synaesthetes were more precise when matching colour hue, but not brightness. Interestingly, the variance of synaesthetes' recalled matches in this experiment matched that associated with synaesthetic colours in the first experiment. Overall, our data suggests that, for associative grapheme-colour synaesthetes, synaesthetic colours behave more like recalled colours, as opposed to physical colours that can be seen.