The prevalence of synaesthesia depends on early language learning

Watson, Marcus R.; Chromý, Jan; Crawford, Lyle; Eagleman, David M.; Enns, James T.; Akins, Kathleen A.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2016.12.004

Cited by 28 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 115 publications

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“…And how might skills and benefits interact with synaesthesia via genetics or the environment? Firstly, we know that synaesthesia is likely to be genetically primed [2,[65][66][67][68] but whether it appears, and what form it takes, may be dependent on early experiences [69,70]. Once it emerges, synaesthesia appears to correlate with other cognitive differences, such as those identified here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Learning in colour: children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits in vocabulary and self-evaluated reading

Smees

Hughes

Carmichael

et al. 2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cognitive benefits associated with grapheme-colour synaesthesia in adults are well documented, but far less is known about whether such benefits might arise in synaesthetes as children. One previous study on a very small group of randomly sampled child synaesthetes found cognitive benefits in short-term memory and processing speed (the ability to quickly scan an array of images and discriminate between them), but was inconclusive for a test of receptive vocabulary. Using a stratified population sample ( Growing Up in Scotland Project, Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Executive, 2007), we investigated the performance of a large cohort of child grapheme-colour synaesthetes using four literacy measures taken at age 10 years. These were three verbal comprehension measures (expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary and sentence comprehension) and one measure of academic self-concept in reading (plus one measure of academic self-concept in numeracy as a comparison). After controlling for demographic differences between groups, synaesthetes showed significantly enhanced performance for expressive and receptive vocabulary compared to their peers, but no benefits in sentence comprehension. Child synaesthetes also reported significantly higher academic self-concept for reading, but not for numeracy. Finally, we found that synaesthetes made significantly more progress than controls across the primary school years, although they began school with no a priori advantage. Our study provides powerful new evidence that children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show vocabulary and literacy differences, which we contextualize within a theory of synaesthetic development. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia’.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Learning in colour: children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits in vocabulary and self-evaluated reading

Smees

Hughes

Carmichael

et al. 2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…PERCEPTUAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND CORTICAL PLASTICITY 29 Moreover, it has been suggested that letter-color synesthesia develops because synesthetic concurrents can aid the acquisition of reading skills (Watson et al, 2017;Watson, Akins, Spiker, Crawford, & Enns, 2014). For instance, colors might be exploited to master the tasks involved in becoming literate (Asano & Yokosawa, 2013).…”

Section: Phenomenological Specificity: the Special Status Of Colormentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinated neural, behavioral, and phenomenological changes in perceptual plasticity through overtraining of synesthetic associations

et al. 2018

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Synesthesia is associated with additional perceptual experiences, which are automatically and consistently triggered by specific inducing stimuli. Synesthesia is also accompanied by more general sensory and cortical changes, including enhanced modality-specific cortical excitability. Extensive cognitive training has been shown to generate synesthesia-like phenomenology but whether these experiences are accompanied by neurophysiological changes characteristic of synesthesia remains unknown. Addressing this question provides a unique opportunity to elucidate the neural basis of perceptual plasticity relevant to conscious experiences. Here we investigate whether extensive training of letter-color associations leads not only to synesthetic experiences, but also to changes in cortical excitability. We confirm that overtraining synesthetic associations results in synesthetic phenomenology. Stroop tasks further reveal synesthesia-like performance following training. Electroencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation show, respectively, enhanced visual evoked potentials (in response to untrained patterns) and lower phosphene thresholds, demonstrating specific cortical changes. An active (using letter-symbol training) and a passive control confirmed these results were due to letter-color training and not simply to repeated testing. Summarizing, we demonstrate specific cortical changes, following training-induced acquisition of synesthetic phenomenology that are characteristic of genuine synesthesia. Collectively, our data reveal dramatic plasticity in human visual perception, expressed through a coordinated set of behavioral, neurophysiological, and phenomenological changes.

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“…psycholinguistic attributes such as sound, meaning, ordinality, frequency, visual shape and so on), and knowledge about graphemes may be updated by acquiring new knowledge or by learning a new language, does acquiring new knowledge about graphemes modulate the synaesthetic colours for the graphemes? It has been pointed out that grapheme-colour synaesthesia is profoundly connected with grapheme learning [11,15,33]. Synaesthetic colours, which are determined by some features of graphemes, may serve as a memory aid and help grapheme learning, especially in a synaesthete's childhood, in which he/she must learn many graphemes with effort [11,15,33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been pointed out that grapheme-colour synaesthesia is profoundly connected with grapheme learning [11,15,33]. Synaesthetic colours, which are determined by some features of graphemes, may serve as a memory aid and help grapheme learning, especially in a synaesthete's childhood, in which he/she must learn many graphemes with effort [11,15,33]. Some studies have provided models and empirical data that support this idea.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synaesthetic colour associations for Japanese Kanji characters: from the perspective of grapheme learning

Asano

Takahashi

Tsushiro

et al. 2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One of the fundamental questions about grapheme–colour synaesthesia is how specific associations between the graphemes and colours are formed. We addressed this question by focusing on the determinants of synaesthetic colours for Japanese Kanji characters (logographic characters) using a psycholinguistic approach. Study 1 explored the influence meaning has on synaesthetic colours for Kanji characters representing abstract meanings by examining synaesthetic colours for antonym pairs (i.e. characters with meanings opposed to each other) in Japanese synaesthetes. Results showed that semantic relations influenced the grapheme–colour associations for characters representing abstract meanings in the early stages of learning abstract Kanji, while the influence was reduced in the grapheme–colour associations for those learned later. Study 2 examined the effect that learning new sounds or meanings of graphemes has on synaesthetic colours for those graphemes. Japanese synaesthetes were taught new sounds or new meanings for familiar Kanji characters. Results indicated that acquiring new information for graphemes slightly but significantly reduced the test–retest grapheme–colour association consistency, suggesting that synaesthetic colours can be modulated to reflect the synaesthete's latest knowledge about graphemes. Implications of these findings are discussed from the perspective of the relationship between synaesthesia and grapheme learning. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia’.

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The prevalence of synaesthesia depends on early language learning

Cited by 28 publications

References 115 publications

Learning in colour: children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits in vocabulary and self-evaluated reading

Learning in colour: children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits in vocabulary and self-evaluated reading

Coordinated neural, behavioral, and phenomenological changes in perceptual plasticity through overtraining of synesthetic associations

Synaesthetic colour associations for Japanese Kanji characters: from the perspective of grapheme learning

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