Multi sensory and synaesthesia

Question 1

define synaesthesia

Answer 1

where one sensory/cognitive pathway leads to an automatic experience in a second sensory/cognitive pathway - joining of the senses

Question 2

what types of synaesthesia are there

Answer 2

grapheme colour
sound colour
broadband and narrowband
lexical gustatory
mirror touch

Question 3

define grapheme colour

Answer 3

percieve numbers/letters as different colours

Question 4

define sound colour

Answer 4

hear a sound and see a colour

Question 5

define broadband

Answer 5

version of sound colour

collection of tones causes colour

Question 6

define narrow band

Answer 6

version of sound colour

single tone causes colour

Question 7

define lexical gustatory

Answer 7

unpleasant sensation ie taste of egg triggered by sound of k phoneme

ward and simner 2003 - irrespective of spelling

Question 8

define mirror touch

Answer 8

ability to feel others pain

Question 9

day 2005

Answer 9

synaesthesia often pleasant or neutral so do not realise of difference until much older

Question 10

ward et al 2006 and grapheme colour and sound colour

Answer 10

found similarities between synaesthesiacs
a tends to be red
o white or black
s yellow

lighter colours tend to have higher pitch

Question 11

banissy and ward 2007 / banissy et al 2011 and mirror touch

Answer 11

mirror touch linked to increase empathy and better emotional discrimination

Question 12

is synaesthesia inherited?

Answer 12

baron cohen et al 1996 / galton 1883

• appears to run in families but not definite
• more common in females but can be a reporting bias

-difficult to link to x chromosome as there has found to be disconcordance in monozygotic twins and can skip generations

Question 13

testing for synaesthesia

Answer 13

can only be tested for validity in terms of response stability over a long period of time

baron cohen et al 1993
stability in idiosyncratic patterns provide credible support

if responses are automatic/preattentive then likely to be credible

Question 14

palemeri et al 2002 and testing for synaesthesia

Answer 14

single subect with grapheme colour syn
asked to colour match 100 works then test after 2 months
97 % correct compared to 43% control correct of undergrad students after two weeks
3% wrong because called ‘beige’ ‘offwhite’

Question 15

dixon 200/palmeri 2002 and automatic syn

Answer 15

stroop task for control and syn
control - time decrease when report colour over word
syn - faster when report colour as usually sees colour

Question 16

palmeri 2002 and preattentive syn

Answer 16

visual search of one letter in group of diff letters
- target and distractors
syn - easier to locate target as diff colour to distractors

BUT - may also be faster because easier to reject the distractors

Question 17

what are the possible neural mechanisms involved in synaesthesia

Answer 17

may be due to reduces neural pruning - unnecessary connections between diff areas in brain removed during development
grapheme colour due to link between visual cortex and visual word form area

Question 18

disinhibited feedback/hyperbinding as an explanation for synaesthesia

Answer 18

the inducing stimulus and the synesthetic sensation are coupled by a sensory nexus area, which may be located in the parietal cortex - emphasise areas involved in binding and cross sensory integration

Question 19

neufeld et al 2012 and hyperbinding

Answer 19

auditory visual syn increased activity in left inferior paretial cortex suggesting diff processing in the integration of info
no increase in acitivity in v4 visual cortex

Question 20

Define the Mcgurk effect

Answer 20

Conflicting info from visual and auditory pathways

Resolve by manipulating perception of soils to fit vision

Question 21

Why is visual perception more dominant

Answer 21

Seems more compelling/reliable

Question 22

Why circumstances does vision often dominate

Answer 22

Ventriloquist- Sound as though coming from puppet because lips are moving

TV sound from characters

Visual capture - draw visual shape and not haptic (how it feels)

Question 23

Describe shams 2000

Answer 23

Disk flash once but two beeps
Think flash twice

Increased beeps not impact
Must be same time frame

Control accurate - issue with integration

Question 24

Describe neural fission

Answer 24

Fmri record activity in primary visual cortex
Increase in illusion trials of flash and beep
- way of processing change

Question 25

Define modality precision

Answer 25

The level of variability in the reliability of a cue

Accuracy and precision of a sense

Question 26

Define modality appropriateness

Answer 26

Tend to weight the more accurate sense as dominating the right context

Ie visual for spacial info
Auditory for temporal info