Root, Nicholas and Chkhaidze, Ana and Melero, Helena and Sidoroff-Dorso, Anton and Volberg, Gregor and Zhang, Yijia and Rouw, Romke (2025) How "diagnostic" criteria interact to shape synesthetic behavior: The role of self-report and test-retest consistency in synesthesia research. CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION, 129: 103819. ISSN 1053-8100, 1090-2376
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
In the past few decades, researchers have established synesthesia as a genuine phenomenon, identified its characteristics (in particular, its automatic, specific and consistent nature), and developed "gold standard" inclusion criteria for research: synesthetes are participants that self- report synesthetic experiences and have consistent (beyond a "cutoff" score) inducer-to- concurrent pairings. While this approach has significantly advanced scientific progress, it can confuse interpretation of research findings due to its inherent circularity: consistency will always appear to be a defining characteristic of synesthesia so long as it is also an inclusion criterion for synesthesia studies. Here, we aim to clarify the relationship between self-report and consistency in "diagnosing"1 synesthesia. In four experiments, we find that: (1) the optimal consistency cutoff score differs across languages; (2) self-reported synesthetes that "fail" consistency tests can still behave like synesthetes - to our knowledge the first objective evidence that "inconsistent synesthesia" is a genuine phenomenon; (3) Using self-report as the sole inclusion criterion does not significantly change the effect size of two measures of synesthetic behavior (the synesthetic Stroop and synesthetic color Palette); and (4) Consistency influences Stroop effect size in self- reported synesthetes only, but influences the Palette in both synesthetes and non-synesthete controls. We conclude that (in certain cases) self-report alone is a sufficient diagnostic criterion for synesthesia, and that synesthesia studies can increase explanatory power by using raw consistency scores as a covariate in analyses, rather than as an inclusion criterion.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | GRAPHEME-COLOR ASSOCIATIONS; STANDARDIZED TEST BATTERY; SYNAESTHESIA; REGULARITIES; SENSITIVITY; Synesthesia; Grapheme-color; Self-report; Test-retest consistency |
| Subjects: | 100 Philosophy & psychology > 150 Psychology |
| Divisions: | Human Sciences > Institut für Psychologie > Lehrstuhl für Cognitive Neuroscience – Prof. Dr. Angelika Lingnau |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 12 May 2026 05:28 |
| Last Modified: | 12 May 2026 05:28 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/67372 |
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