Simner Julia, Ludwig Vera U
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Neurocase. 2012;18(2):167-80. doi: 10.1080/13554794.2011.568503. Epub 2011 Jul 26.
We report a single-case study, EB, who experiences synaesthetic sensations of color from tactile stimulation. Developmental synaesthesia is typically characterized by the consistency of synaesthetic pairings over time, in that stimuli tend to generate the same synaesthetic responses on different occasions. Here we demonstrate that EB's touch-color associations are significantly more consistent over time compared to a group of non-synaesthete controls, but that this comes in the face of surprisingly high consistency among non-synaesthetes themselves, for certain tactile stimuli. We show, too, that EB's touch-color correspondences are guided by an implicit rule system, and that this system is shared by non-synaesthetes. Both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes are sensitive to tactile qualities such as smoothness and softness, and these qualities are systematically related to the luminance and chroma of associated colors.
我们报告了一项单病例研究，对象为EB，其在触觉刺激下会产生颜色联觉感受。发育性联觉的典型特征是联觉配对随时间的一致性，即刺激在不同场合往往会产生相同的联觉反应。在此我们证明，与一组非联觉对照者相比，EB的触觉-颜色关联随时间的一致性显著更高，但面对某些触觉刺激时，非联觉者自身之间的一致性也出奇地高。我们还表明，EB的触觉-颜色对应关系受一个隐性规则系统的引导，且该系统为非联觉者所共有。联觉者和非联觉者都对诸如光滑度和柔软度等触觉特性敏感，并且这些特性与相关颜色的亮度和色度存在系统关联。
