Speed Laura J, Majid Asifa
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2018 Mar;44(3):468-481. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000469. Epub 2017 Aug 17.
Olfaction is often considered a vestigial sense in humans, demoted throughout evolution to make way for the dominant sense of vision. This perspective on olfaction is reflected in how we think and talk about smells in the West, with odor imagery and odor language reported to be difficult. In the present study we demonstrate odor cognition is superior in odor-color synaesthesia, where there are additional sensory connections to odor concepts. Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which input in 1 modality leads to involuntary perceptual associations. Semantic accounts of synaesthesia posit synaesthetic associations are mediated by activation of inducing concepts. Therefore, synaesthetic associations may strengthen conceptual representations. To test this idea, we ran 6 odor-color synaesthetes and 17 matched controls on a battery of tasks exploring odor and color cognition. We found synaesthetes outperformed controls on tests of both odor and color discrimination, demonstrating for the first time enhanced perception in both the inducer (odor) and concurrent (color) modality. So, not only do synaesthetes have additional perceptual experiences in comparison to controls, their primary perceptual experience is also different. Finally, synaesthetes were more consistent and accurate at naming odors. We propose synaesthetic associations to odors strengthen odor concepts, making them more differentiated (facilitating odor discrimination) and easier to link with lexical representations (facilitating odor naming). In summary, we show for the first time that both odor language and perception is enhanced in people with synaesthetic associations to odors. (PsycINFO Database Record
嗅觉在人类中常被视为一种退化的感官，在整个进化过程中地位下降，为占主导地位的视觉感官让路。这种对嗅觉的看法反映在西方我们思考和谈论气味的方式上，据报道气味意象和气味语言都很困难。在本研究中，我们证明在气味 - 颜色联觉中气味认知更优越，在这种情况下存在与气味概念的额外感官联系。联觉是一种神经现象，其中一种模态的输入会导致不由自主的感知关联。联觉的语义解释认为，联觉关联是由诱发概念的激活介导的。因此，联觉关联可能会加强概念表征。为了验证这一想法，我们对6名气味 - 颜色联觉者和17名匹配的对照组进行了一系列探索气味和颜色认知的任务。我们发现，在气味和颜色辨别测试中，联觉者的表现优于对照组，首次证明在诱发物（气味）和并发物（颜色）模态中感知都得到了增强。所以，与对照组相比，联觉者不仅有额外的感知体验，他们的主要感知体验也有所不同。最后，联觉者在命名气味时更加一致和准确。我们提出与气味的联觉关联会加强气味概念，使其更具区分性（便于气味辨别），并且更容易与词汇表征相联系（便于气味命名）。总之，我们首次表明，与气味有联觉关联的人的气味语言和感知都得到了增强。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
