162,185 research outputs found
A longitudinal study of grapheme-colour synaesthesia in childhood: 6/7 years to 10/11 years
No full textGrapheme-colour synaesthesia is a condition characterised by enduring and consistent associations between letter/digits and colours. This study is the continuation of longitudinal research begun by Simner, Harrold, Creed, Monro and Foulkes (2009) which aimed to explore the development of this condition in real time within a childhood population. In that earlier study we randomly sampled over 600 children and tested them aged 6/7 years and 7/8 years. We identified the child synaesthetes within that cohort and measured their development over 1 year, in comparison to a group of nonsynaesthetic children with both average and superior memories. We were able to show the beginnings of a developmental progression in which synaesthetic associations (e.g. A = red) mature over time from relatively chaotic pairings into a system of fixed consistent associations. In the current study we return to this same population three years later when participants are now 10/11 years. We used the same paired-association memory task to determine the synaesthetic status of our participants and to also establish synaesthetes’ inventories of grapheme-colour associations. We compared their inventories to those from age 6/7 year and 7/8 years to examine how synaesthesia matures over time. Together with earlier findings, our study shows that grapheme-colour synaesthesia emerges with a protracted lineal trajectory, with 34% of letters/digits fixed at age 6/7 years, 48% fixed at 7/8 years and 71% fixed at 10/11 years. We also show several cases where synaesthesia is not developing in the same time-frame as peers, either because it has died out at an older age, or because it was slower to develop than other cases. Our study paints the first picture of the emergence of synaesthesia in real-time over four years within a randomly sampled population of child synaesthetes
Colour fluctuations in grapheme-colour synaesthesia: The effect of clinical and non-clinical mood changes
No full textSynaesthesia is a condition that gives rise to unusual secondary sensations (e.g., colours are perceived when listening to music). These unusual sensations tend to be reported as being stable throughout adulthood (e.g., Simner & Logie, 2007, Neurocase, 13, 358) and the consistency of these experiences over time is taken as the behavioural hallmark of genuineness. Our study looked at the influence of mood states on synaesthetic colours. In Experiment 1, we recruited grapheme‐colour synaesthetes (who experience colours from letters/digits) and elicited their synaesthetic colours, as well as their mood and depression states, in two different testing sessions. In each session, participants completed the PANAS‐X (Watson & Clark, 1999) and the BDI‐II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996, Manual for Beck Depression Inventory‐II), and chose their synaesthetic colours for letters A‐Z from an interactive colour palette. We found that negative mood significantly decreased the luminance of synaesthetic colours. In Experiment 2, we showed that synaesthetic colours were also less luminant for synaesthetes with anxiety disorder, versus those without. Additional evidence suggests that colour saturation, too, may inversely correlate with depressive symptoms. These results show that fluctuations in mood within both a normal and clinical range influence synaesthetic colours over time. This has implications for our understanding about the longitudinal stability of synaesthetic experiences, and of how mood may interact with the visual (imagery) systems
sj-docx-1-pec-10.1177_03010066211042186 - Supplemental material for What is the Link Between Mental Imagery and Sensory Sensitivity? Insights from Aphantasia
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-pec-10.1177_03010066211042186 for What is the Link Between Mental Imagery and Sensory Sensitivity? Insights from Aphantasia by C. J. Dance, J. Ward and J. Simner in Perception</p
sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911241234104 – Supplemental material for An Automated Online Measure for Misophonia: The Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adults
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911241234104 for An Automated Online Measure for Misophonia: The Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adults by Julia Simner, Louisa J. Rinaldi and Jamie Ward in Assessment</p
Audiovisual Cross-Modal Correspondences in the General Population
No full textParise C, Spence C. Audiovisual Cross-Modal Correspondences in the General Population. In: Simner J, Hubbard EM, eds. The Oxford handbook of synesthesia. Oxford library of psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; 2013: 790-815
Shared cross-modal associations and the emergence of the lexicon
No full textThis thesis centres around a sensory theory of protolanguage emergence, or STP. The
STP proposes that shared biases to make associations between sensory modalities provided
the basis for the emergence of a shared protolinguistic lexicon. Crucially, this
lexicon would have been grounded in our perceptual systems, and thus fundamentally
non-arbitrary. The foundation of such a lexicon lies in shared cross-modal associations:
biases shared among language users to map properties in one modality (e.g.,
visual size) onto another (e.g., vowel sounds). While there is broad evidence that we
make associations between a variety of modalities (Spence, 2011), this thesis focuses
specifically on associations involving linguistic sound, arguing that these associations
would have been most important in language emergence. Early linguistic utterances,
by virtue of their grounding in shared cross-modal associations, could be formed and
understood with high mutual intelligibility.
The first chapter of the thesis will outline this theory in detail, addressing the nature
of the proposed protolanguage system, arguing for the utility of non-arbitrariness
at the point of language emergence, and proposing evidence for the likely transition
form a non-arbitrary protolanguage to the predominantly arbitrary language systems
we observe today. The remainder of the thesis will focus on providing empirical evidence
to support this theory in two ways: (i) presenting experimental data showing
evidence of shared associations between linguistic sound and other modalities, and (ii)
providing evidence that such associations are evident cross-linguistically, despite the
predominantly arbitrary nature of modern languages.
Chapter two will examine well-documented associations between vowel quality
and physical size (e.g., /i/ is small, and /a/ is large; Sapir, 1929). This chapter
presents a new experimental approach which fails to find robust associations between
vowel quality and size absent the use of a forced choice paradigm. Chapter three
turns to associations between linguistic sound and shape angularity, taking a critical
perspective on the classic takete/maluma experiment (Kohler, 1929). New empirical
evidence shows that the acquisition of visual word forms plays a highly influential role
in mediating associations between linguistic sound and angularity, but that associations
between linguistic sound and visual form also play a minor role in auditory tasks.
Chapter four will examine a relatively unexplored modality: taste. A simple survey
which asks participants to choose non-words to match representative tastes shows that
certain linguistic sounds are preferred for certain food items. In a more detailed study,
we use a more direct perceptual matching task with actual tastants and synthesises
speech sounds, further showing that people make robust shared associations between
linguistic sound and taste. Chapter five returns to the visual modality, considering
previously unexmained associations between linguistic sound and motion, specifically
the feature of speed. This study demonstrates that people do make robust associations
between the two modalities, particularly for vowel quality.
Chapter six will aim to take a different empirical approach, considering non-arbitrariness
in natural language. Motivated by the experimental data from the previous chapters,
we turn to corpus analyses to assess the presence of non-arbitrariness in natural language
which concurs with behavioural data showing linguistic cross-modal associations.
First, a corpus analysis of taste synonyms in English shows small but significant
correlations between form and meaning. With the goal of addressing the universality
of specific sound-meaning associations, we examine cross-linguistic corpora of taste
and motion terms, showing that particular phonological features tend to connect to
certain tastes and types of motion across genetically and geographically distinct languages.
Lastly, the thesis will conclude by considering the STP in light of the empirical
evidence presented, and suggesting possible future empirical directions to explore the
theory more broadly
[Report to Chief J. E. Curry, by an unknown author #1]
No full textReport to Chief J. E. Curry, by an unknown author. The report contains a list of officers who gave depositions to the United States Attorney
[Report to Chief J. E. Curry, by an unknown author #2]
No full textReport to Chief J. E. Curry, by an unknown author. The report contains a list of officers who gave depositions to the United States Attorney
Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)
No full textAbstract The evolution of human communication likely centred, in part, on shared intuitions about the mapping of sound to meaning. These sound-meaning intuitions, known as sound symbolism, can be seen for example in the bouba-kiki effect, where nonsense words carry inherent meaning about their likely referents (here, rounded vs. angular objects respectively). In our paper we suggest for the first time that sound symbolism can afford successful interspecies communication between humans and animals in certain circumstances. Over four investigations, including replications, we show that humans use sound symbolism significantly and pervasively to attempt to convey meaning to domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), specifically, by exploiting vocal prosody to signal elevation in space. In Study 1 we analysed recordings of amateur dog owners commanding their dogs to move upwards (e.g., “stand”) or downwards (e.g., “down”), finding higher mean pitch (fundamental frequency, f 0 ) in the former versus the latter. In Studies 2 and 3a, we replicated this in competitive dog owners, both in self-report, and in acoustic voice-analyses recorded in competition. In addition, professionals also used further sound symbolism beyond amateurs, in their commands for the dog to “sit” (using higher pitch to denote sit up vs. sit down). Finally, in Study 3b, we demonstrate that sound symbolism appears to be mutually understood by dogs in certain useful circumstances. Dogs were faster to enact “down” commands with prosodic sound symbolism, compared to without, demonstrating that sound symbolism may sometimes underlie successful inter-species communication
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