Biases and regularities of grapheme–colour associations in Japanese nonsynaesthetic population

Abstract

Associations between graphemes and colours in a nonsynaesthetic Japanese population were investigated. Participants chose the most suitable colour from 11 basic colour terms for each of 40 graphemes from the four categories of graphemes used in the Japanese language (kana characters, English alphabet letters, and Arabic and kanji numerals). This test was repeated after a three-week interval. In their responses, which were not as temporally consistent as those of grapheme–colour synaesthetes, participants showed biases and regularities that were comparable to those of synaesthetes reported in past studies. Although it has been believed that only synaesthetes, and not nonsynaesthetes, tended to associate graphemes with colours based on grapheme frequency, Berlin and Kay's colour typology, and colour word frequency, participants in this study tended in part to associate graphemes with colours based on the above factors. Moreover, participants that were nonsynaesthetes tended to associate different graphemes that shared sounds and/or meanings (e.g., Arabic and kanji numerals representing the same number) with the same colours, which was analogous to the findings in Japanese synaesthetes. These results support the view that grapheme–colour synaesthesia might have its origins in cross-modal association processes that are shared with the general population.

Keywords:

• Grapheme–colour association
• Grapheme–colour synaesthesia
• Nonsynaesthetes
• Japanese population
• Synaesthesia

Supplemental material

Supplemental Figures S1–S3 are available via the “Supplemental” tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1018835).

Notes

¹According to Berlin and Kay (1969), human languages have a limited number of basic colour terms ranging from two to 11, and the order of their entry into every language follows a fixed pattern. For example, in a language having only two basic color terms, the focal colors are “black” and “white”. If a language has three terms, they typically represent “black”, “white”, and “red”. Next introduced is the term representing “yellow” or “green”, followed by “blue”, and then “brown”. Finally, the terms for “orange”, “pink”, “purple”, and “grey” are added in no particular order. English has a set of terms for 11 colours, and so does Japanese (Uchikawa & Boynton, 1987). While several variations have been proposed, the proposal of Berlin and Kay has been accepted broadly, and it is suggested that their typology reflects the order of colour term acquisition both in the evolution of human language and in human developmental processes.