Synaesthesia: An unusual perspective on perception

Anina N. Rich
Visual Attention Lab
Brigham & Women's Hospital

Synaesthesia is a fascinating phenomenon in which particular 
stimuli elicit unusual involuntary experiences. For example, 
a sound may induce a colour experience. In the most common 
form, seeing a letter results in a colour that is vivid and 
highly consistent over time. Synaesthetes get interference 
from these colours in Stroop-type tasks, providing an 
indirect measure of synaesthesia. I will present data 
regarding the role of attention in synaesthesia, using 
modified attentional blink and visual search paradigms. 
I will also discuss the results of a large-scale study of 
synaesthetes that provide tantalizing cues as to the origin 
of synaesthetic binding.