Orange Is Less Than Green: An Examination of Bidirectionality in Grapheme-Color Synesthesia. (August 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Drew, Stefanie A.; Awad, Jasmine F.; Hackney, Brandon C.; Fenn, Elise
• Is Part Of: Perception. Volume 47:Number 8(2018)
• Page Start: 881
• Page End: 891
• Publication Date: 2018-08
• Subjects: bidirectionality -- color -- grapheme-color -- synesthesia; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception; Periodicals; 153.705
• DOI: 10.1177/0301006618779485
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0301-0066

Abstract

Grapheme-color synesthetes experience a sense of color when viewing graphemes (e.g., digits and letters). Traditionally, these synesthetic perceptions are considered to be unidirectional, where viewing a grapheme elicits a nonveridical sensation of color, but viewing a color does not induce a reciprocal sense of a grapheme. A growing body of research has emerged that suggests the potential for bidirectional percepts, wherein color facilitates additional grapheme perception. We present here a novel paradigm in which we presented two sets of pure color patches, based on synesthete's reported colors, side-by-side and asked participants to indicate the color patch with the greater affiliated magnitude. Results indicated that the odds of answering correctly on trials were significantly greater for synesthetes (80.2% accuracy) than nonsynesthetes (52.1% accuracy). These results are aligned with other reports that support the notion of inducing a sense of magnitude from color in synesthetes. These findings challenge the traditional model of synesthesia as a unidirectional phenomenon and have implications of the neuronal communications that underlie perception in general.