van Petersen Eline, Altgassen Mareike, van Lier Rob, van Leeuwen Tessa M
Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany.
Cortex. 2020 Sep;130:49-63. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.034. Epub 2020 May 28.
Individuals with sequence-space synesthesia (SSS) perceive sequences like months, days and numbers in certain spatial arrangements. Several cognitive benefits have been associated with SSS, such as enhanced mental rotation, more vivid visual imagery and an advantage in spatial processing. The current study aimed to further investigate these cognitive benefits, focusing on spatial navigation skills, to explore if their enhanced sensitivity to spatial relations is reflected in enhanced navigational performance. Synesthetes were distinguished from controls by means of a questionnaire, a consistency test and drawings. A virtual Morris Water Maze (MWM) task with two allocentric and two egocentric navigation conditions was used to assess spatial navigation abilities. For the allocentric tasks, participants had to use object cues to find a hidden platform and for the egocentric tasks, they had to use their own position as a reference. Results showed that synesthetes performed significantly better compared to controls on the allocentric and egocentric tasks that reflected real life situations more accurately. However, this significant result was only found for the time taken to find the platform and not for the length of the path that was taken. In exploratory analyses, no significant relations were found between task performance and the specific features of the manifestation of each individual's synesthesia. Our hypothesis that synesthetes with the ability to mentally rotate their spatial arrangements would perform better on the allocentric task was not confirmed. Results add to the growing body of literature concerning the cognitive benefits of SSS and are consistent with the possibility that enhanced spatial navigation skills emerge from generally enhanced visuospatial abilities in SSS.
患有序列空间联觉（SSS）的个体能够以特定的空间排列方式感知诸如月份、日期和数字等序列。SSS与多种认知益处相关联，比如增强心理旋转能力、拥有更生动的视觉意象以及在空间处理方面具有优势。当前的研究旨在进一步探究这些认知益处，重点关注空间导航技能，以探讨他们对空间关系的增强敏感性是否体现在增强的导航表现中。通过问卷调查、一致性测试和绘图将联觉者与对照组区分开来。使用一个具有两种非自我中心和两种自我中心导航条件的虚拟莫里斯水迷宫（MWM）任务来评估空间导航能力。对于非自我中心任务，参与者必须利用物体线索找到隐藏平台；对于自我中心任务，他们必须以自己的位置为参照。结果显示，在更准确反映现实生活情况的非自我中心和自我中心任务中，联觉者的表现明显优于对照组。然而，这一显著结果仅在找到平台所需的时间上发现，而不是在所走路径的长度上。在探索性分析中，未发现任务表现与每个个体联觉表现的特定特征之间存在显著关系。我们关于能够在心理上旋转其空间排列的联觉者在非自我中心任务中表现会更好的假设未得到证实。研究结果为有关SSS认知益处的文献增添了内容，并且与SSS中增强的空间导航技能源于普遍增强的视觉空间能力这一可能性相一致。
