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Is Synesthesia a Form of Mental Imagery?

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Multisensory Imagery

Abstract

Synesthesia occurs when the activation of one sense modality elicits an experience in another modality. Synesthetic experiences are often referred to as imagery, and indeed both mental imagery and synesthesia occur in many sense modes and can represent forms of internally generated sensory experiences. However, they differ in prevalence, effects on perception, how voluntary they are, and probably in sites of brain activation; moreover, imagery and synesthesia are clearly differentiated by synesthetes themselves. We conclude that they are best considered as related but distinct mental processes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Witthoft and Winawer (2006) provided the first documented account of a synesthete whose concurrents stemmed from a childhood alphabet (a magnet set). Readers may care to know that one of the authors, AR, identified another case of grapheme-color synesthesia which also demonstrates a childhood foundation for concurrents. His sister, Angela Reeves, learned her letters in 1948 when she was 5 years old from a colored drawing of the alphabet made by her primary school teacher; the letters remained on the wall of the school into the 1960s when Angela was able to check them again. While there is evidence that experience can influence the development of concurrents (e.g., Witthoft and Winawer, 2006), the current literature does not support an account that is based solely upon a learned association. Grapheme-color synesthesia is a very common form of synesthesia; Day’s (2005) survey of 572 synesthetes revealed that 69% experienced grapheme-color synesthesia, and clearly those who can trace their concurrents to childhood sources are extremely rare.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Elizabethtown College, One Alpha Drive, Elizabethtown, PA, 17022-2298, USA

    Catherine Craver-Lemley

  2. Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Adam Reeves

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  1. Catherine Craver-Lemley
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  2. Adam Reeves
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Correspondence to Catherine Craver-Lemley .

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  1. , Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, WOODRUFF CIRCLE WMB 6207 101, ATLANTA, 30329, Georgia, USA

    Simon Lacey

  2. , School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, Montserrat

    Rebecca Lawson

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Craver-Lemley, C., Reeves, A. (2013). Is Synesthesia a Form of Mental Imagery?. In: Lacey, S., Lawson, R. (eds) Multisensory Imagery. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5879-1_10

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