Tasty non-words and neighbours: The cognitive roots of lexical-gustatory synaesthesia
For lexical-gustatory synaesthetes, words trigger automatic, associated food sensations (e.g., for JB, the word slope tastes of over-ripe melon). Our study tests two claims about this unusual condition: that synaesthetic tastes are associated with abstract levels of word representation (concepts/lem...
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Published in | Cognition Vol. 110; no. 2; pp. 171 - 181 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Amsterdam
Elsevier B.V
01.02.2009
Elsevier |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | For lexical-gustatory synaesthetes, words trigger automatic, associated food sensations (e.g., for JB, the word
slope tastes of over-ripe melon). Our study tests two claims about this unusual condition: that synaesthetic tastes are associated with abstract levels of word representation (concepts/lemmas), and that the first tastes to crystallise in early development are those triggered by food-names (e.g.,
apple tastes of apple;
Simner & Ward, 2006). This concept/lemma-based proposal is difficult to immediately reconcile with the finding that non-words may also generate tastes (
Ward, Simner, & Auyeung, 2005), since non-words have no concept/lemma representations. We manipulated the characteristics of non-words to provide three types of evidence that non-word tastes in fact stem from real word neighbours: Non-words with neighbours (e.g.,
keach) are more likely to generate tastes than those with no neighbours (e.g.,
vilps); pseudo-homophone non-words that are orthographically close to real words (e.g.,
peeple) are more likely to generate tastes than those that are more distant (
baybee); and finally, the tastes of non-words are less consistent, and less intense, than those of real words. Additionally, we test the hypothesis that synaesthetic tastes develop initially from food-names by showing that non-words are more intensely flavoured if they are homophonic with food-names (e.g.,
toffie) versus non-foods (e.g.,
peeple). From this we conclude that synaesthetic tastes develop from food-names, and that tasty non-words do not challenge a concept/lemma-based account of lexical-gustatory synaesthesia. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1 |
ISSN: | 0010-0277 1873-7838 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.11.008 |