Do the colors of your letters depend on your language? Language-dependent and universal influences on grapheme-color synesthesia in seven languages

Nicholas Root; Michiko Asano; Helena Melero; Chai-Youn Kim; Anton V Sidoroff-Dorso; Argiro Vatakis; Kazuhiko Yokosawa; Vilayanur Ramachandran; Romke Rouw

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103192

Do the colors of your letters depend on your language? Language-dependent and universal influences on grapheme-color synesthesia in seven languages

Conscious Cogn. 2021 Oct:95:103192. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103192. Epub 2021 Sep 6.

Authors

Nicholas Root¹, Michiko Asano², Helena Melero³, Chai-Youn Kim⁴, Anton V Sidoroff-Dorso⁵, Argiro Vatakis⁶, Kazuhiko Yokosawa⁷, Vilayanur Ramachandran⁸, Romke Rouw⁹

Affiliations

¹ Brain and Cognition, Psychology Department, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, Netherlands. Electronic address: n.root@uva.nl.
² Department of Psychology, College of Contemporary Psychology, Rikkyo University, 1-2-26 Kitano, Niiza, Saitama 352-8558, Japan.
³ Department of Psychobiology and Methodology in Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Av. Séneca, 2, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Korea University, 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Moscow Pedagogical State University, Moscow 119435, Russia; Centre of Interdisciplinary Research of Contemporary Childhood, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow 123290, Russia.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, 136 Syngrou Ave., 17671 Athens, Greece.
⁷ Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
⁸ Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, San Diego, CA 92093, United States.
⁹ Brain and Cognition, Psychology Department, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, Netherlands.

PMID: 34500326
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103192

Abstract

Grapheme-color synesthetes experience graphemes as having a consistent color (e.g., "N is turquoise"). Synesthetes' specific associations (which letter is which color) are often influenced by linguistic properties such as phonetic similarity, color terms ("Y is yellow"), and semantic associations ("D is for dog and dogs are brown"). However, most studies of synesthesia use only English-speaking synesthetes. Here, we measure the effect of color terms, semantic associations, and non-linguistic shape-color associations on synesthetic associations in Dutch, English, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. The effect size of linguistic influences (color terms, semantic associations) differed significantly between languages. In contrast, the effect size of non-linguistic influences (shape-color associations), which we predicted to be universal, indeed did not differ between languages. We conclude that language matters (outcomes are influenced by the synesthete's language) and that synesthesia offers an exceptional opportunity to study influences on letter representations in different languages.

Keywords: Cross-linguistic; Grapheme-color; Multisensory; Regulatory factor; Synesthesia.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Color
Color Perception*
Humans
Language*
Perceptual Disorders*
Synesthesia