Spence Charles, Deroy Ophelia
Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Iperception. 2012;3(5):316-8. doi: 10.1068/i0526ic. Epub 2012 May 9.
"Are Chimpanzees synaesthetic?" An affirmative answer to this question appeared recently in a Nature commentary on a study by Ludwig, Adachi, and Matzuzawa (2011) that demonstrated crossmodal correspondences in both chimpanzees and humans. Here we question the claim that chimpanzees are synaesthetic. We also question the claim that certain crossmodal correspondences are innate. We suggest an alternative account for the crossmodal correspondence between auditory pitch and visual lightness in terms of the internalization of correlations present in the environment. We highlight the limitations of such natural correlation approaches to the study of crossmodal correspondences as well as how such claims could potentially be tested in future research.
“黑猩猩具有联觉吗？”最近，在《自然》杂志对路德维希、足立和松泽（2011年）一项研究的评论中，对这个问题给出了肯定答案，该研究表明黑猩猩和人类都存在跨通道对应关系。在此，我们对黑猩猩具有联觉这一说法提出质疑。我们也对某些跨通道对应关系是天生的这一说法提出质疑。我们针对听觉音高和视觉亮度之间的跨通道对应关系，从环境中存在的相关性内化角度提出了一种替代解释。我们强调了这种自然相关方法在研究跨通道对应关系方面的局限性，以及此类说法在未来研究中如何可能得到验证。
