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Synaesthesia in Chinese characters: the role of radical function and position
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 22:43 authored by Wan-Yu Hung, Julia SimnerJulia Simner, Richard Shillcock, David M EaglemanGrapheme-colour synaesthetes experience unusual colour percepts when they encounter letters and/or digits. Studies of English-speaking grapheme-colour synaesthetes have shown that synaesthetic colours are sometimes triggered by rule-based linguistic mechanisms (e.g., B might be blue). In contrast, little is known about synaesthesia in logographic languages such as Chinese. The current study shows the mechanisms by which synaesthetic speakers of Chinese colour their language. One hypothesis is that Chinese characters might be coloured by their constituent morphological units, known as radicals, and we tested this by eliciting synaesthetic colours for characters while manipulating features of the radicals within them. We found that both the function (semantic vs. phonetic) and position (left vs. right) of radicals influence the nature of the synaesthetic colour generated. Our data show that in Chinese, as in English, synaesthetic colours are influenced by systematic rules, rather than by random associations, and that these rules are based on existing psycholinguistic mechanisms of language processing.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Consciousness and CognitionISSN
1053-8100Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Issue
1Volume
24Page range
38-48Department affiliated with
- Psychology Publications
Research groups affiliated with
- Synaesthesia Research Group Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-01-25First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-01-25First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-01-25Usage metrics
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