Mattingley J B, Rich A N, Yelland G, Bradshaw J L
School of Behavioural Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Nature. 2001 Mar 29;410(6828):580-2. doi: 10.1038/35069062.
Synaesthesia is an unusual perceptual phenomenon in which events in one sensory modality induce vivid sensations in another. Individuals may 'taste' shapes, 'hear' colours, or 'feel' sounds. Synaesthesia was first described over a century ago, but little is known about its underlying causes or its effects on cognition. Most reports have been anecdotal or have focused on isolated unusual cases. Here we report an investigation of 15 individuals with colour-graphemic synaesthesia, each of whom experiences idiosyncratic but highly consistent colours for letters and digits. Using a colour-form interference paradigm, we show that induced synaesthetic experiences cannot be consciously suppressed even when detrimental to task performance. In contrast, if letters and digits are presented briefly and masked, so that they are processed but unavailable for overt report, the synaesthesia is eliminated. These results show that synaesthetic experiences can be prevented despite substantial processing of the sensory stimuli that otherwise trigger them. We conclude that automatic binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia arises after initial processes of letter and digit recognition are complete.
联觉是一种不同寻常的感知现象，即一种感觉模态中的事件会在另一种感觉模态中引发生动的感觉。个体可能会“品尝”形状、“听到”颜色或“感受”声音。联觉早在一个多世纪前就被首次描述，但对其潜在原因或对认知的影响却知之甚少。大多数报告都是轶事性的，或者集中在个别特殊案例上。在此，我们报告了一项对15名患有颜色-字母联觉者的调查，他们每个人对字母和数字都有独特但高度一致的颜色体验。使用颜色-形状干扰范式，我们发现即使诱导的联觉体验对任务表现不利，也无法被有意识地抑制。相比之下，如果字母和数字短暂呈现并被掩蔽，以至于它们被处理但无法进行公开报告，那么联觉就会消除。这些结果表明，尽管对通常会触发联觉体验的感觉刺激进行了大量处理，但联觉体验仍可被阻止。我们得出结论，联觉中颜色与字母数字形状的自动联结是在字母和数字识别的初始过程完成之后产生的。
