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Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color
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Synaesthesia, creativity and art: what is the link?

Jamie Ward1, Daisy Thompson-Lake, Roxanne Ely

  • 1Department of Psychology, University College London, UK. jamie.ward@ucl.ac.uk

British Journal of Psychology (London, England : 1953)
|May 31, 2007
PubMed
Summary

Synaesthesia is linked to increased engagement in creative arts, particularly music and visual arts. While synaesthetes show enhanced association abilities, this doesn't directly translate to higher scores on all creativity tests.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Synaesthesia involves experiencing sensory associations between different modalities (e.g., colors with sounds).
  • Previous theories suggest synaesthesia may foster creativity through enhanced associative abilities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between synaesthesia and creativity.
  • To explore whether synaesthetes exhibit higher levels of engagement in creative arts and perform better on creativity assessments.

Main Methods:

  • A sample of 82 individuals with various forms of synaesthesia completed two psychometric creativity tests (Remote Associates Test, Alternate Uses Test).
  • Participants reported their engagement in creative arts, including visual art and music.
  • Performance was compared to control groups.

Main Results:

  • Synaesthetes showed a significant tendency to spend more time engaged in creative arts, with variations based on synaesthesia type (e.g., music-vision synaesthetes more likely to play instruments).
  • No correlation was found between creative arts engagement and psychometric creativity measures.
  • Synaesthetes outperformed controls on the Remote Associates Test but not the Alternate Uses Test.

Conclusions:

  • The increased engagement of synaesthetes in arts likely stems from different mechanisms than psychometric creativity measures.
  • Synaesthesia may provide enhanced bottom-up access to associations but not necessarily improved flexible use in divergent thinking.
  • A direct link between synaesthesia, creative arts engagement, and psychometric creativity is not definitively established.