What Can Illusory Conjunctions Reveal About Synaesthetic Bindings?

We examined for the first time the occurrence of ICs in grap heme–colour synaesthesia. Experiment 1 replicated our previous finding, showing the effects of numerical distance on ICs (Arendet al.,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 2013,20, 1181 –1186). Participants viewed a display containing two centrally presented letters and two coloured numbers and were asked to report: (1) whether the letters were same/different, (2) the colour of the larger number, and (3) the level of confidence concerning the colour of the number. Experiment 2 us ed a modified version of this task. Synaesthetes (N=5) and controls (N=15) viewed number–colour pairs that were congruent or incongruent with that of the synaesthetic association. Grapheme–colour synaesthesia significantly affected ICs on incongruent but not on congruent trials. Our findings str ongly support the notion that shape and colour are free-floating features in synaesthesia, similar to what is observed in normal cognition.

Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Isabel Arend and Avishai Henik Source Type: research