title: Social perception in synaesthesia for colour.
abstract: Synaesthesia is a rare phenomenon in which stimulation in one modality (e.g., audition) evokes a secondary percept not associated with the first (e.g., colour). Prior work has suggested links between synaesthesia and other neurodevelopmental conditions that are linked to altered social perception abilities. With this in mind, here we sought to examine social perception abilities in grapheme-colour synaesthesia (where achromatic graphemes evoke colour experiences) by examining facial identity and facial emotion perception in synaesthetes and controls. Our results indicate that individuals who experience grapheme-colour synaesthesia outperformed controls on tasks involving fine visual discrimination of facial identity and emotion, but not on tasks involving holistic face processing. These findings are discussed in the context of broader perceptual and cognitive traits previously associated with synaesthesia for colour, with the suggestion that performance benefits shown by grapheme-colour synaesthetes may be related to domain-general visual discrimination biases observed in this group.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Goldsmiths University of London , London , UK.|b Department of Psychology , James Cook University , Singapore.
authors.forename: Agnieszka B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Janik McErlean
authors.affiliation: c School of Psychology , Victoria University of Wellington , Wellington , New Zealand.
authors.forename: Tirta
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Susilo
authors.affiliation: d Department of Psychology , Harvard University , Cambridge , MA , USA.|e Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience , University College London , London , UK.
authors.forename: Constantin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rezlescu
authors.affiliation: f Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Dartmouth College , Hanover , NH , USA.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bray
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Goldsmiths University of London , London , UK.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Banissy
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D012938:Social Perception; D000080311:Synesthesia; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion recognition; facial affect; identity processing; synaesthesia; synesthesia