In synaesthesia one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, such as when hearing a sound produces photisms--that is, mental percepts of colours. In the past, the idiosyncrasy of this phenomenon, as well as the natural mistrust of scientists towards the subjective, consigned synaesthesia to the periphery of scientific interest. However, the landscape has changed radically in the last two decades. The labour of many researchers, inside as well as outside of cognitive neuroscience, has transformed synaesthesia into a scientific reality whose existence can be demonstrated and studied empirically. The present paper summarizes and reflects on our current knowledge concerning synaesthesia in all its aspects (cognition, behaviour, neurology, genetics, and demographics).

LexicalÁchromatic synaesthesia is a condition in which letters and/or words elicit percepts of synaesthetic colours, termed photisms. Anecdotal data suggest that synaesthetes are particularly sensitive to inconsistencies between their synaesthetic percepts and the real world, e.g., it can be annoying and unpleasant for them to see a letter printed in a colour different than the respective photism colour. For R, a synaesthete subject who participated in the present study, the photisms possess specific emotional values (a red photism is pleasing and attractive, green is repulsive and unpleasant, etc.). In contrast to the anecdotal data, R does not always find the colourÁphotism incongruence to be disturbing. More importantly, he states that it is the emotional coherence between the stimulus and the corresponding photism that matters. In a series of experiments, we studied this new concept of emotional coherence on three levels*subjective (self-report), behavioural, and physiological, corroborating R's introspective statements. Besides the implications of the concept of coherence itself, the results presented here suggest that even highly subjective cognitive constructs can be approached and measured experimentally, uncovering the workings of the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms.

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This article examines changes in shopping behavior in two postcommunist countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, by replicating Bitgood and Dukes's study of pedestrian choice point behavior. It also extends the former study by applying the methodology to a different type of intersection and subjecting the results to a random resampling statistical test. A survey conducted via naturalistic observation in selected Czech and Slovak shopping malls is presented. Is the movement of shoppers disorganized and unplanned, or is there a tendency to use the principles of the economy of movement, which suggests that pedestrians tend to move in a way involving the least number of steps? A randomization resampling test with 100,000 samples was performed on the data obtained in shopping malls. It can be concluded that pedestrians tend to avoid unnecessary steps by economizing their trajectories ( t = 11.34, p = .00013). The results, thus, show that a qualitative change occurred in the shopping behavior of Czech and Slovak shoppers (as compared with year 2002), and there is an obvious tendency to minimize the total distance in correspondence with the principles of the economy of movement.

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