Echoes from the past: synaesthetic colour associations reflect childhood gender stereotypes.

ABSTRACT: Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which linguistic symbols evoke consistent colour sensations. Synaesthesia is believed to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, but how these factors interact to create specific associations in specific individuals is poorly understood. In this paper, we show that a grapheme-colour association in adult synaesthetes can be traced to a particular environmental effect at a particular moment in childhood. We propose a model in which specific grapheme-colour associations are 'locked in' during development in children predisposed to become synaesthetes, whereas grapheme-colour associations remain flexible in non-synaesthetes. We exploit Western gender-colour stereotypes to test our model: we found that young girls

SUBMITTER: Root NB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6834006 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature