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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 20, 2026

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Published on: February 20, 2014

Pseudo-synesthesia through reading books with colored letters.

Olympia Colizoli¹, Jaap M J Murre, Romke Rouw

¹Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. o.colizoli@uva.nl

|July 5, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Reading in color can induce synesthesia-like traits in non-synesthetes. This study shows that learning letter-color associations is possible through colored reading material, suggesting potential for training programs.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psychology

Background:

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon involving consistent, extraordinary subjective experiences in response to stimuli.
A common form is grapheme-color synesthesia, where letters or numbers elicit specific color perceptions.
This study investigates if synesthesia-like traits can be acquired through reading colored text.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine if individuals without synesthesia can develop letter-color associations by reading specially prepared colored books.
To explore the potential for training-induced synesthetic experiences.

Main Methods:

Non-synesthetes read a book with over 49,000 words presented in color.
Modified Stroop tasks were administered before and after reading to assess learned associations.
A perceptual crowding task was used to evaluate other synesthetic markers.

Main Results:

Reading in color induced behavioral markers associated with synesthesia in non-synesthetes.
Stroop task results demonstrated learned letter-color associations (p = .030) that correlated with subjective color experiences (r = 0.51, p = .05).
The frequency of letter exposure influenced association strength, with differences observed between upper- and lower-case letters.

Conclusions:

This research provides the first evidence that letter-color associations can be acquired through reading colored text.
Reading in color offers a viable method for exploring synesthesia and developing long-term training programs.
The findings suggest that some synesthetic behavioral traits may be trainable in adulthood.