A meta-analysis of memory ability in synaesthesia

Ward, Jamie; Field, Andy P.; Chin, Taylor

doi:10.1080/09658211.2019.1646771

Cited by 19 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…In a similar vein, Simner et al (2009) later suggested that the cognitive advantages associated with synaesthesia (such as enhanced memory; e.g., Rothen et al, 2012;Ward et al, 2019) might be elevated to prodigious savant levels when combined with the autistic tendency to obsess and overrehearse. That is, each condition contributes different cognitive elements that, when combined, may lead to the emergence of savant skills.…”

Section: Enhanced Cognition and Savant Talentmentioning

confidence: 96%

Synaesthesia and autism: Different developmental outcomes from overlapping mechanisms?

Leeuwen

Neufeld

Hughes

et al. 2020

Cognitive Neuropsychology

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Synaesthesia, a mixing of the senses, is more common in individuals with autism. Here, we review the evidence for the association between synaesthesia and autism with regard to their genetic background, brain connectivity, perception, cognitive mechanisms and their contribution to exceptional talents. Currently, the overlap between synaesthesia and autism is established most convincingly at the level of alterations in sensory sensitivity and perception, with synaesthetes showing autism-like profiles of sensory sensitivity and a bias towards details in perception. Shared features may include a predominance of local over global connectivity in the brain. When autism and synaesthesia co-occur in the same individual, the chance of developing heightened cognitive and memory abilities is increased. We discuss how the same theoretical models could potentially explain both conditions. Given the evidence, we believe the phenotypical overlap between autism and synaesthesia has been established clearly enough to invite future research to confirm overlapping mechanisms.

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Section: Enhanced Cognition and Savant Talentmentioning

confidence: 96%

Synaesthesia and autism: Different developmental outcomes from overlapping mechanisms?

Leeuwen

Neufeld

Hughes

et al. 2020

Cognitive Neuropsychology

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“…As an example, FPT performance is partly dependent on matching the image with representations from memory. Since synesthetes have previously been shown to outperform nonsynesthetes in a wide range of memory tasks (Ward et al, 2019), a better FPT performance in more synesthetic individuals might be driven by memory effects. Further, synesthetes seem to have more vivid visual mental imagery (Ward and Simner, 2020), which likely is also required in the FPT matching process.…”

Section: Visual Perception and Degree Of Synesthesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual processing links autism and synesthesia: a twin study

van Leeuwen,

Wilsson,

Nobel Norrman

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background. Synesthesia occurs more commonly in individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) and is associated with autistic traits and autism-related perceptual processing characteristics, including a more detail-focused attentional style and altered sensory sensitivity. Furthermore, autistic traits and autism-like sensory sensitivity show a synesthesia-dosage effect, since they increase with the amount of synesthesia types in synesthetes and with the degree of synesthesia (how consistently colors are associated with graphemes) in non-synesthetes.Methods. Here we investigated a predominantly non-synesthetic twin sample, enriched for ASC and other neurodevelopmental disorders (n=65, 14-34 years, 60% female). We modelled the linear relationships between the degree of synesthesia and autistic traits, sensory sensitivity, and visual perception, both within-twin pairs (22 pairs) where all factors shared by twins are implicitly controlled (including 50-100% genetics), and across the entire cohort.Results. Our results indicate that the degree of synesthesia is associated with autistic traits only within the attention to details domain and with sensory hyper-, but not hypo-sensitivity. These associations were stronger within-twin pairs compared to across the sample. Further, twins with a higher degree of synesthesia were better than their co-twins in identifying fragmented images in the Fragmented Pictures Test (FPT).Conclusions. This study is the first twin study on the association between synesthesia and autism-related perceptual and clinical features, and the results suggest that a twin design can be more sensitive for detecting these associations. Consistent with previous findings, the results support an association between the degree of synesthesia and autism-related perceptual features, while utilizing a different self-report measure for sensory sensitivity. The novel finding of enhanced feature integration in the FPT in twins with a higher degree of synesthesia challenges the view of a generally more detail-focused attentional style in synesthesia and might be related to enhanced memory or mental imagery in more synesthetic individuals.

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“…To aid the interpretation of the findings from native and nonnative discrimination, in Experiment 1 we also included digit span as a control task in which we expected the synesthetes to have no or at most slight superiority (47). If synesthetes show an overall superiority in making both native and nonnative discriminations, the results for digit span will allow us to evaluate whether the differences might arise from higher overall motivation or attentiveness during the experimental session rather than from heightened perceptual sensitivity.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced perceptual narrowing in synesthesia

Maurer

Ghloum

Gibson

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Synesthesia is a neurologic trait in which specific inducers, such as sounds, automatically elicit additional idiosyncratic percepts, such as color (thus “colored hearing”). One explanation for this trait—and the one tested here—is that synesthesia results from unusually weak pruning of cortical synaptic hyperconnectivity during early perceptual development. We tested the prediction from this hypothesis that synesthetes would be superior at making discriminations from nonnative categories that are normally weakened by experience-dependent pruning during a critical period early in development—namely, discrimination among nonnative phonemes (Hindi retroflex /d̪a/ and dental /ɖa/), among chimpanzee faces, and among inverted human faces. Like the superiority of 6-mo-old infants over older infants, the synesthetic groups were significantly better than control groups at making all the nonnative discriminations across five samples and three testing sites. The consistent superiority of the synesthetic groups in making discriminations that are normally eliminated during infancy suggests that residual cortical connectivity in synesthesia supports changes in perception that extend beyond the specific synesthetic percepts, consistent with the incomplete pruning hypothesis.

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A meta-analysis of memory ability in synaesthesia

Cited by 19 publications

References 76 publications

Synaesthesia and autism: Different developmental outcomes from overlapping mechanisms?

Synaesthesia and autism: Different developmental outcomes from overlapping mechanisms?

Perceptual processing links autism and synesthesia: a twin study

Reduced perceptual narrowing in synesthesia

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