title: Higher prevalence of synaesthesia in art students.
abstract: Synaesthesia may facilitate the expression of creativity. Therefore synaesthetes may be more common in the world of creative art. To test this possibility, we used behavioural and phenomenological measures to assess the existence of grapheme-colour synaesthesia in a sample of art students (N = 99) and a control sample (N = 96). We found a prevalence of about 7% in the former and about 2% in the latter. Our findings suggest that synaesthesia may indeed be more common in art students.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Muesmattstrasse 45, 3000 Bern 9, Switzerland. nicolas.rothen@psy.unibe.ch
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rothen
authors.forename: Beat
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meier
mesh_terms: D001154:Art; D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D003405:Creativity; D006801:Humans; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*