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Updated: Mar 26, 2026
10:27
Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color
Published on: February 20, 2014
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Multicolored words: Uncovering the relationship between reading mechanisms and synesthesia
Laura J Blazej1, Ariel M Cohen-Goldberg1
1Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
Summary
Synesthesia research shows word colors are usually linked to the first letter. For compound words, a second color may appear, influenced by morphology and meaning, revealing complex synesthetic interactions.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Grapheme-color and lexical-color synesthesia are common but poorly understood in reading.
- Existing research links synesthetic experiences to graphemes and word meaning only.
Observation:
- A case study of WBL, a synesthete, involved 3000 color judgments for various word types.
- WBL's word color was predominantly determined by the first letter.
Findings:
- WBL reported two colors for prefixed/compound words (14%), with the second color linked to the second morpheme's first letter.
- Morphological factors (stem/compound frequency, semantic relatedness) influenced the perception of one vs. two lexical colors in compounds.
Implications:
- This study is the first to report morphological structure effects in synesthesia.
- Synesthetic colors arise from a complex interplay of perceptual, graphemic, morphological, and semantic factors during reading.
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