{"id":142,"date":"2013-04-27T17:20:43","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T21:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2013-12-09T16:23:18","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T21:23:18","slug":"the-colors-of-the-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/04\/27\/the-colors-of-the-alphabet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Colors of the Alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine that you could taste sounds.\u00a0 If you were lucky, your name would be delicious—every time someone said it you might taste that one fruit smoothie you love or a fresh-baked cookie.\u00a0 Each word would be like sampling a new flavor, for better or worse.\u00a0 This is a form of synesthesia, a condition in which one sense activates a separate sense.\u00a0 Color-grapheme synesthesia seems more believable to most people.\u00a0 Due to this condition, about 5% of the world’s population sees numbers and letters as inherently colored, even if they are printed in black.\u00a0 This can actually improve performance on some tasks, such as a visual search.\u00a0 The left half of the picture below shows the vision of a normal individual; the right half shows that of an individual with synesthesia.\u00a0 As you can see, it is much easier to find the 2\u2019s for an individual with synesthesia.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Though it may seem surprising, those of us without synesthesia experience its effects on a far smaller scale.\u00a0 For example, if you had to choose either white or black to represent the letter \u201cO,\u201d which would you choose?\u00a0 How about for the letter \u201cZ?\u201d\u00a0 If you answered white for \u201cO\u201d and black for \u201cZ,\u201d you are displaying a common association prevalent in both people with synesthesia and for those without.\u00a0 The factors driving these associations seem to be both learned and naturally occurring, though it is the topic of popular research.\u00a0 It illuminates the nature of learning and that initially we associate shapes with colors, but as shapes take on meaning the associations change.<\/p>\n

Ferrinne Spector and Daphne Maurer of McMaster University studied naturally biased associations between shape and color such as these (\u201cZ\u201d is associated with black and \u201cO\u201d with white) through a series of six experiments.\u00a0 Prior research had sparked their interest:\u00a0 they knew wanted to examine similar associations between color-grapheme individuals and individuals with normally functioning senses with a hunch that the two groups were not as different as previously thought.\u00a0 Brain imaging techniques had found that activation in areas in the parietal lobe used for perception were similar in individuals with synesthesia and also those with typically functioning perception.<\/p>\n

They tested toddlers, young adults, and older adults in their experiments that essentially asked participants to associate colors with letters.\u00a0 This could be problematic with toddlers, who are for the most part illiterate, but Spector and Maurer devised a clever method to determine color-letter associations.\u00a0 Toddlers were shown a picture of a letter and asked to choose between a series of differently colored boxes that could contain the letter.\u00a0 The color of the box that they chose for each letter indicated that they associated the box color with the letter.\u00a0 A picture of the letter was shown, rather than just verbally saying the letter, because the experimenters found no consistent associations without an image of the letter.<\/p>\n

By testing such a wide span of ages, they found that all age groups consistently paired \u201cO\u201d with white and \u201cX\u201d with black, deeming it naturally biased.\u00a0 Young adults and older adults showed chromatic associations between colors and letters that toddlers did not, indicating that these associations were learned. \u00a0The only exception to this was that all age groups matched \u201cC\u201d with yellow.\u00a0 Toddlers did not associate other letters, such as \u201cG\u201d with a consistent color, whereas young adults and older adults paired \u201cG\u201d with green because, of course, the word \u201cgreen\u201d starts with \u201cg.\u201d\u00a0 This pairing came readily to older people, whereas toddlers, without this learning, randomly assigned \u201cG\u201d to a color.\u00a0 Spector and Maurer used data from other experiments to determine that these chromatic associations where shared with individuals with synesthesia.\u00a0 Later variations of their experiment showed that all test groups paired angular shapes with black and circular shapes with white, much like \u201cZ\u201d being paired to black and \u201cO\u201d to white.<\/p>\n

So, what does this all mean?\u00a0 Spector and Maurer tentatively concluded that some associations were learned (\u201cG\u201d is green), whereas others are naturally occurring (\u201cO\u201d is white).\u00a0 These intrinsic associations could be due to shapes seen in nature.\u00a0 Jagged objects have more shadows and could be darker and more easily associated with black; the opposite is true for rounded objects.\u00a0 These experiences could alter connections in the brain to establish associations as the individual aged.\u00a0 Whatever associations in the brain are being made, synesthesia was presumed to amp those associations up a notch to the extent that letters appeared with their own distinct colors.\u00a0 Spector and Maurer proposed that further experiments could test individuals from different cultures and languages, who may not initially associate \u201cG\u201d with green because they do no speak English.\u00a0 These results would generate evidence that differentiated between intrinsic and learned associations.\u00a0 Spector and Maurer\u2019s research shows that even though synesthesia sounds like an abstract and perhaps unbelievable condition, everyone demonstrates some synesthesia-like tendencies, even if you do not perceive these letters as brightly colored.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

Ferrinne, S., Maurer, D.\u00a0 (2011). The colors of the alphabet: Naturally-biased associations between shape and color.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,<\/i>\u00a037(2), Apr 2011, 484-495. doi:\u00a010.1037\/a0021437<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image:<\/p>\n

Macalester University.\u00a0 Grapheme-color synesthesia<\/i>. Retrieved from<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/psychology\/whathap\/UBNRP\/gcsynesthesia\/introduction.html<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine that you could taste sounds.\u00a0 If you were lucky, your name would be delicious—every time someone said it you might taste that one fruit smoothie you love or a fresh-baked cookie.\u00a0 Each word would be like sampling a new flavor, for better or worse.\u00a0 This is a form of synesthesia, a condition in which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80219,313],"tags":[130391],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}