Rizza Aurora, Price Mark C
Faculty of Psychology, Sapienza, University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Cogn Process. 2012 Aug;13 Suppl 1:S299-303. doi: 10.1007/s10339-012-0459-7.
Sequence-space synaesthesia is a type of visuo-spatial imagery in which numbers or calendar units are experienced to occupy locations in space. Previous studies have claimed that these synaesthetes (1) have stronger self-reported visual (but not spatial) imagery and (2) perform unusually well on mental rotation tasks that are usually taken to reflect spatial (but not visual) imagery. To further investigate whether this form of synaesthesia is related to spatial imagery, we compared synaesthetes to controls on the Object Spatial Imagery Questionnaire, a paper folding test and a mental rotation task. The synaesthetes did not differ from controls in self-reported spatial imagery, but showed a strong trend to report better visual imagery, replicating previously reported data patterns. Consistent with this, their paper folding and mental rotation performance was no better than controls. We also confirmed that, in our pooled sample, performance on both these tasks was positively correlated with self-reported spatial imagery. We suggest our data are more consistent with the view that sequence-space synaesthesia is related to visual than to spatial imagery, and we suggest reasons why previous studies may have found superior mental rotation performance.
序列空间联觉是一种视觉空间意象，在这种意象中，人们会感觉数字或日历单位占据了空间中的位置。先前的研究表明，这些联觉者（1）自我报告的视觉（而非空间）意象更强，（2）在通常被认为反映空间（而非视觉）意象的心理旋转任务中表现异常出色。为了进一步研究这种联觉形式是否与空间意象有关，我们将联觉者与对照组在物体空间意象问卷、折纸测试和心理旋转任务上进行了比较。联觉者在自我报告的空间意象方面与对照组没有差异，但在报告更好的视觉意象方面呈现出强烈趋势，重复了先前报告的数据模式。与此一致的是，他们的折纸和心理旋转表现并不比对照组更好。我们还证实，在我们的合并样本中，这两项任务的表现与自我报告的空间意象呈正相关。我们认为我们的数据更符合序列空间联觉与视觉意象而非空间意象相关的观点，并提出了先前研究可能发现心理旋转表现更优的原因。
