Frequencies of Hiragana, Alphabets, and Digits Correlates in Color Association: Comparison between ‘Synesthetes’ and ‘Non-Synesthetes’ in Japanese A Shiraiwa1, M Nishimoto2, T X Fujisawa3, N Nagata1 |
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1Research Center for Kansei Value Creation, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan |
| Grapheme-color synesthesia means perceiving induced color automatically when viewing letters. Synesthesia is important for clarifying the relationship between sensation modalities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the features of synesthetes from a correlation between color association and frequencies of letters. We defined color association as any colors that synesthetes can perceive and non-synesthetes associate with when viewing letters. We used hiragana (Japanese phonetic characters), alphabets, and digits as stimuli. Participants (synesthetes and non-synesthetes) observed hiragana, alphabets, and digits, and were told to select a color association for each letter. We investigated correlations between color association and frequencies of letters. We found the following: (1) There was a correlation between color association and frequencies with hiragana and digits both for synesthetes and non-synesthetes. (2) There were no correlations with alphabets. (3) Commonly used letters (from a native language and digits) affected correlations regardless of whether participants were synesthetes or non-synesthetes. Therefore, it is thought that perceiving and associating color when viewing letters is automatic, and synesthetes can bring colors up in their consciousness, unlike non-synesthetes. |
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