Jennifer L. Mankin|Julia Simner
A Is for Apple: the Role of Letter–Word Associations in the Development of Grapheme–Colour Synaesthesia
University of Sussex|University of Sussex
study investigates origins specific lettercolour associations experienced people graphemecolour synaesthesia present novel evidence frequently observed trends synaesthesia eg typically red tied orthographic associations letters words eg apple typically formed literacy acquisition experiments first tested members general population show certain words consistently associated letters alphabet eg apple named index words sampling population elicited typical colour associations index words eg apples red used letter index word colour connections predict colours letters would paired together based orthographicsemantic influences looked direct lettercolour associations eg red blue synaesthetes nonsynaesthetes populations show statistically colour predicted index words matches significantly lettercolour mappings red apple apples prototypically red therefore conclude lettercolour associations synaesthetes nonsynaesthetes tied earlylearned letterword associations