RT Journal Article
T1 Do the colors of your letters depend on your language? Language-dependent and universal influences on grapheme-color synesthesia in seven languages
A1 Root, Nicholas
A1 Asano, Michiko
A1 Melero Carrasco, Helena
A1 Kim, Chai-Youn
A1 Sidoroff-Dorso, Anton V.
A1 Vatakis, Argiro
A1 Yokosawa, Kazuhiko
A1 Ramachandrann, Vilayanur
A1 Rouw, Romke
AB 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 nonlinguistic 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.
PB Elsevier
SN 1053-8100
YR 2021
FD 2021-09-06
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/100344
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/100344
LA eng
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025