title: Psychophysiological evidence for the genuineness of swimming-style colour synaesthesia.
abstract: Recently, swimming-style colour synaesthesia was introduced as a new form of synaesthesia. A synaesthetic Stroop test was used to establish its genuineness. Since Stroop interference can occur for any type of overlearned association, in the present study we used a modified Stroop test and psychophysiological synaesthetic conditioning to further establish the genuineness of this form of synaesthesia. We compared the performance of a swimming-style colour synaesthete and a control who was trained on swimming-style colour associations. Our results showed that behavioural aspects of swimming-style colour synaesthesia can be mimicked in a trained control. Importantly, however, our results showed a psychophysiological conditioning effect for the synaesthete only. We discuss the theoretical relevance of swimming-style colour synaesthesia according to different models of synaesthesia. We conclude that swimming-style colour synaesthesia is a genuine form of synaesthesia, can be mimicked behaviourally in non-synaesthetes, and is best explained by a re-entrant feedback model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. nicolas.rothen@gmail.com
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rothen
authors.forename: Danko
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nikolić
authors.forename: Uta Maria
authors.initials: UM
authors.lastname: Jürgens
authors.forename: Aleksandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mroczko-Wąsowicz
authors.forename: Josephine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cock
authors.forename: Beat
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meier
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011603:Psychophysiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D060865:Repetition Priming; D057190:Stroop Test; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D000080311:Synesthesia