Redefining Color in Synesthesia

Grapheme-color synesthesia is a condition in which letters and numbers automatically trigger the sensation of specific colors in a person’s mind. Previous research on synesthesia revealed that certain letters seem to be associated with certain colors at a rate greater than chance. The studies that report these trends analyze the synesthetes’ data by categorizing synesthetes’ reports of their colors into the 11 basic color terms. The purpose of this study was to determine whether this simplification of the data is an acceptable representation of the synesthetes’ experience, or if perhaps those analyses are discarding valuable information about the specificity, idiosyncracity, and diversity of synesthetes’ color sensations. In a task that directly tested how well synesthetes’ colors match standard color labels, non-synesthete participants attempted to classify data from over 1,000 synesthetes, as well as a set of prototypical standard colors. The synesthetes’ colors came from an online website which allows synesthetes to choose from over 16.7 million possible color selections for each of their letters. The results demonstrate that synesthetes’ colors are difficult to classify under the 11 basic color terms, suggesting that synesthesia may not be merely a magnification of “normal” or prototypical cross-modal associations. Additional analyses using powerful methods such as k-means clustering further supported the difficulty isolating meaningful group trends in synesthetes’ data. Implications for understanding how synesthesia may or may not relate to creative metaphor are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology, Developmental

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Gorges, Madeleine V. Z.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hernandez, Arturo E.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Tomson, Steffie
• Sheth, Bhavin R.
• Yoshida, Hanako

• Synesthesia
• Grapheme-color
• Synesthesia Battery
• Basic colors

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/4511

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/4511