The consistency tests in the battery proposed by Eagleman et al. Subjective experience is a core criterion of synesthesia that needs to be taken into account, and due to the great variability in synesthesia, not all synesthesia types have corresponding standardized consistency tests (Niccolai et al., 2012 Simner, 2012).įull size image Consistency tests: Variations and challenges It should be noted, however, that scoring within the synesthetic range on a consistency test is not sufficient nor necessary for an individual to be identified as synesthete. Computerized consistency tests have been used extensively within synesthesia research and have been reported to accurately differentiate self-identified synesthetes from non-synesthetes (Rothen et al., 2013). If the participant is unusually consistent in the colors they choose, this is taken to indicate non-spurious grapheme-color associations. Each grapheme is randomly repeated three times throughout the test. Participants are also given the option of selecting “no color”. Here, graphemes are presented one at a time on a screen and participants are requested to choose, using an in-test color palette, what color they think best “fits” the grapheme (see Fig. This battery includes a computerized grapheme-color consistency test, based on analog tests which had already been used for decades (Baron-Cohen et al., 1987). ( 2007) developed a standardized test battery that aimed to capture these characteristics. Synesthetic phenomena are highly subjective and varied, but two defining characteristics are the stability (consistency) of synesthetic experiences over time and their automaticity. Over time, subjective self-reports (e.g., Nussbaumer, 1873) have come to be supplemented with objective measures, in order to independently confirm the occurrence of synesthetic phenomena and to investigate them in greater detail. Researchers have investigated synesthesia since at least the nineteenth century, with varying methods for identifying and measuring qualities of the phenomena (Ward, 2013). An archetypal example is if a person with GCS always experiences the color red when reading the letter “A” even though it is printed in black. Many different types of synesthesia exist, but the majority of studies have focused on grapheme-color synesthesia (GCS), where graphemes (written symbols, e.g., letters and numbers) trigger color sensations (Ward, 2013). Synesthesia is commonly described as a phenomenon where a stimulus, referred to as an inducer, elicits an experience ( concurrent), without requiring any conscious effort on the experiencer’s part where most people would not have the same experience under comparable conditions (Grossenbacher & Lovelace, 2001). Challenges for widespread adoption of synr as well as suggestions for using synr within the field of synesthesia and other areas of psychological research are discussed. Also included is a comparison of synr’s data validation procedure and human ratings, which found that synr had high correspondence with human ratings and outperformed human raters in situations where human raters were easily mislead. An application of synr with pre-existing openly accessible data illustrating how synr is used in practice is presented. To this end, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) is applied in conjunction with a measure of spread in 3D space. Importantly, synr also implements a novel method enabling identification of participants whose scores cannot be interpreted, e.g., who only give black or red color responses. Here, the R package synr is introduced, which provides an efficient interface for exploring consistency test data and applying common procedures for analyzing them. Previously, there has been no publicly available and easy-to-use tool for analyzing consistency test results. In order to objectively verify synesthesia, participants are asked to choose colors for repeatedly presented stimuli and the consistency of their choices is evaluated (consistency test). For instance, in a commonly studied type of synesthesia, stimuli such as words written in black font elicit experiences of other colors, e.g., red. Synesthesia is a phenomenon where sensory stimuli or cognitive concepts elicit additional perceptual experiences.
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