Alvarez Bryan D, Robertson Lynn C
University of California, Berkeley, 4143 Tolman Hall #5050, Berkeley, CA, 94720-5050, USA,
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2013 Nov;75(8):1737-47. doi: 10.3758/s13414-013-0520-3.
Synesthetic color induced by graphemes is well understood to be an automatic perceptual phenomenon paralleling print color in some ways, but also differing in others. We addressed this juxtaposition by asking how synesthetes are affected by synesthetic and print colors that are the same. We tested two groups of grapheme-color synesthetes using a basic color-priming method in which a grapheme prime was presented, followed by a color patch (probe), the color of which was to be named as quickly and accurately as possible. The primes induced either no color, print color only, synesthetic color only, or both forms of color (e.g., a letter "A" printed in red that also triggered synesthetic red). As expected, responses to name the probe color were faster if it was congruent with the prime color than if it was incongruent. The new finding (Exp. 1) was that a prime that induced the same print and synesthetic colors led to substantially larger priming effects than did either type of color individually, an effect that could not be attributed to semantic priming (Exp. 2). In addition, the synesthesia effects correlated with a standard measure of visual imagery. These findings are discussed as being consistent with the hypothesis that print and synesthetic color converge on similar color mechanisms.
由字形引发的联觉颜色在某种程度上被公认为是一种自动感知现象，它与印刷颜色有相似之处，但也存在差异。我们通过询问联觉者如何受到相同的联觉颜色和印刷颜色的影响来探讨这种并列关系。我们使用一种基本的颜色启动方法对两组字形 - 颜色联觉者进行了测试，在该方法中，先呈现一个字形启动刺激，然后是一个颜色块（探测刺激），要求尽可能快速准确地说出其颜色。启动刺激要么不引发颜色，要么只引发印刷颜色，要么只引发联觉颜色，要么引发两种颜色形式（例如，一个红色印刷的字母“A”，它也会引发联觉红色）。正如预期的那样，当探测颜色与启动颜色一致时，说出探测颜色的反应比不一致时更快。新发现（实验1）是，引发相同印刷颜色和联觉颜色的启动刺激所产生的启动效应比单独的任何一种颜色都要大得多，这种效应不能归因于语义启动（实验2）。此外，联觉效应与视觉意象的一项标准测量相关。这些发现被认为与印刷颜色和联觉颜色在相似的颜色机制上趋同的假设一致。
