Meng Xianwei, Chen Na, Ishida Junya, Watanabe Katsumi, Murakami Taro
Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Front Psychol. 2023 Aug 14;14:1226661. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1226661. eCollection 2023.
Adults possess a natural inclination to associate sensory cues derived from distinct modalities, such as the pairing of sweet with pink. However, studies exploring crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in the sensory pairing of visual features and tastes, are scant, leaving unanswered questions regarding the developmental trajectory of crossmodal correspondences. The present study investigates whether Japanese preschool children demonstrate specific biases in shape-color, shape-taste, and color-taste associations.
In a series of in-person experiments, 92 children between 3 to 6 years of age completed matching tasks utilizing paper stimuli.
Children exhibit crossmodal correspondences in shape-color (circle-red and asymmetrical star-yellow), shape-taste (triangle-salty and circle-sweet), and color-taste (yellow-sour, black-bitter, and pink-sweet) associations. Moreover, children's choices are not influenced by their individual preferences.
The crossmodal correspondences observed in this study have been observed in previous research on adults from the same (Japanese) culture, although adults showed more crossmodal correspondences than the children in this study (e.g., pink-circle, triangle-sour, and green-bitter). Thus, while some crossmodal correspondences emerge during childhood, others may require additional time to develop, thereby highlighting the importance of understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying crossmodal correspondences from an ontogenic perspective.
成年人具有一种自然倾向，会将源自不同感官模式的线索联系起来，比如将甜味与粉色配对。然而，探索儿童跨模态对应关系的研究，尤其是视觉特征与味觉的感官配对研究却很少，这使得关于跨模态对应关系的发展轨迹仍存在未解答的问题。本研究调查日本学龄前儿童在形状 - 颜色、形状 - 味觉和颜色 - 味觉关联中是否表现出特定偏好。
在一系列现场实验中，92名3至6岁的儿童使用纸质刺激物完成了匹配任务。
儿童在形状 - 颜色（圆形 - 红色和不对称星形 - 黄色）、形状 - 味觉（三角形 - 咸味和圆形 - 甜味）以及颜色 - 味觉（黄色 - 酸味、黑色 - 苦味和粉色 - 甜味）关联中表现出跨模态对应关系。此外，儿童的选择不受其个人偏好的影响。
本研究中观察到的跨模态对应关系在先前针对来自相同（日本）文化的成年人的研究中也有发现，尽管成年人表现出的跨模态对应关系比本研究中的儿童更多（例如粉色 - 圆形、三角形 - 酸味和绿色 - 苦味）。因此，虽然一些跨模态对应关系在儿童期就已出现，但其他关系可能需要更多时间来发展，从而凸显了从个体发生学角度理解跨模态对应关系背后认知机制的重要性。
