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Synesthesia for Manual Alphabet Letters and Numeral Signs in Second- Language Users of Signed Languages

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Synesthesia for Manual Alphabet Letters and Numeral Signs in Second- Language Users of Signed Languages See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304573227 Synesthesia for manual alphabet letters and numeral signs in second- language users of signed languages Article in Neurocase · June 2016 DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2016.1198489 CITATIONS READS 0 118 5 authors, including: Joanna Atkinson David M Eagleman UCL Stanford University 22 PUBLICATIONS 189 CITATIONS 131 PUBLICATIONS 3,519 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Bencie Woll University College London 200 PUBLICATIONS 3,316 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Assessing deaf children's narrative skills View project Sign lanaguage, perception and cognition View project All content following this page was uploaded by Joanna Atkinson on 28 November 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Neurocase The Neural Basis of Cognition ISSN: 1355-4794 (Print) 1465-3656 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nncs20 Synesthesia for manual alphabet letters and numeral signs in second-language users of signed languages Joanna Atkinson, Tanya Lyons, David Eagleman, Bencie Woll & Jamie Ward To cite this article: Joanna Atkinson, Tanya Lyons, David Eagleman, Bencie Woll & Jamie Ward (2016): Synesthesia for manual alphabet letters and numeral signs in second-language users of signed languages, Neurocase, DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2016.1198489 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2016.1198489 Published online: 28 Jun 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 15 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=nncs20 Download by: [University of London] Date: 02 July 2016, At: 12:53 NEUROCASE, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2016.1198489 Synesthesia for manual alphabet letters and numeral signs in second-language users of signed languages Joanna Atkinsona, Tanya Lyonsb, David Eaglemanc, Bencie Wolla and Jamie Wardb,d aDCAL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, London, UK; bSchool of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; cBaylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA; dSackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Many synesthetes experience colors when viewing letters or digits. We document, for the first time, an Received 24 June 2015 analogous phenomenon among users of signed languages who showed color synesthesia for finger- Accepted 1 June 2016 spelled letters and signed numerals. Four synesthetes experienced colors when they viewed manual KEYWORDS letters and numerals (in two cases, colors were subjectively projected on to the hands). There was a Synesthesia; fingerspelling; correspondence between the colors experienced for written graphemes and their manual counterparts, British sign language; suggesting that the development of these two types of synesthesia is interdependent despite the fact American sign language; that these systems are superficially distinct and rely on different perceptual recognition mechanisms in deaf the brain. Introduction grammars, and are unrelated to the spoken and written lan- guages that surround them (Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999). Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which perceptual experi- Numeral signs are considered as part of the lexicons of signed ences, such as colors, tastes, or smells are elicited by stimuli languages and they show variation between and within that are not usually associated with such experiences (see national sign languages (Anderson, 1979; Zeshan, Escobedo Ward & Mattingley, 2006; or Cytowic & Eagleman, 2009; for Delgado, Panda, & De Vos, 2013). Unlike sign languages, man- reviews). It affects around 4% of population (Simner et al., ual alphabets were developed specifically to provide an inter- 2006) and is thought to arise from maturational neurodeve- face with written language. Fingerspelling is primarily used for lopmental differences in the brain, which lead to cross-activa- names of people and places, or to represent words borrowed tion in neural areas that do not usually interact (Hubbard, from written language into signed language. Brang, & Ramachandran, 2011). The most widely documented How might fingerspelling synesthesia relate to existing expla- form is grapheme→color synesthesia, in which written letters, nations of synesthesia such as Ramachandran & Hubbard’s cross- numbers, and words induce color (Simner et al., 2006). For activation theory and adjacency principle (2001a; 2001b: Hubbard example, seeing a letter “j” might induce a concurrent sensa- et al., 2011)? They suggest that genetic factors might lead to failure tion of the color “red”. Letters spoken aloud can also trigger of neurodevelopmental synaptic pruning, such that adjacent brain synesthetic colors (Baron-Cohen, Harrison, Goldstein, & Wyke, regions remain connected into adulthood leading to cross-activa- 1993) but the present study is the first documentation of tion (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001a; 2001b). They state that Downloaded by [University of London] at 12:53 02 July 2016 equivalent synesthesia in the visuomotor language modality, written letters/numbers act as synesthetic inducers because with colors induced by manual fingerspelled letters and V4 color processing is adjacent to the Visual Word Form Area numeral signs. (VWFA,(Cohen & Dehaene, 2004)), which has a key role in mapping Manual alphabets represent orthographic letters of a writ- orthographic input onto lexical representations. Crucially, the ing system using hand configurations to represent each letter, VWFA is cross-modal and activated, during functional magnetic which are combined in sequences of movements to finger- resonance imaging, by any orthographic input whether printed spell written words. The British manual alphabet uses two- letters/words, fingerspelling (Waters et al., 2007), or Braille (Reich, handed configurations, while most other systems, including Szwed, Cohen, & Amedi, 2011). Studies of both BSL and ASL have the American manual alphabet, are one-handed (Figures 1 and reported that watching fingerspelling activates a neural circuit that 2). In all manual alphabets, the hand configurations have been closely overlaps with reading print. Signed languages are strongly designed to represent some visual features of the correspond- left lateralized, harnessingareassuchastheleftinferiorfrontal ing orthographic symbols in at least some letters (see the gyrus, the VWFA, and the lexico-semantic areas of the left middle forms for D in the American Sign Language (ASL) and British temporal gyrus (Emmorey, McCullough, & Weisberg, 2015; Sign Language (BSL) manual alphabets in Figures 1 and 2) but Waters et al., 2007). The perception of fingerspelling is, however, the strength of the relationship varies from letter to letter and additionally linked to activity in bilateral regions dedicated to is sometimes entirely absent (cf. A, E, I, O, U in the BSL alphabet). motion perception and the hand and arm regions of motor cortex Signed languages, used by Deaf communities around the (Waters et al., 2007). Given the extremely close correspondence of world, have evolved naturally, with their own phonologies and CONTACT Joanna Atkinson [email protected] © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 J. ATKINSON ET AL. Figure 2. American manual alphabet and ASL numerals (Image: http://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/American_manual_alphabet, Wikipedia Commons Free Media Repository). and the written letter A both elicited the same color) suggest- ing developmental transfer from letter names to the names of Figure 1. British manual alphabet and BSL numerals (South West region) notes despite the arbitrary nature of the conceptual link. Downloaded by [University of London] at 12:53 02 July 2016 (Images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspelling, Wikipedia Commons Free The form, the corresponding sound, and the semantic Media Repository, http://www.rod-parrott.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/site/numbers). meaning of Braille characters can all act as triggers for synes- thetic color. Steven and Blakemore (2004) described the brain regions involved in processing print and fingerspelling, we experience of color synesthesia in six blind participants with predict that color experiences for fingerspelling are equally phe- prior experience of color vision. Several participants had nomenologically possible. Despite this, there are no previously strong color responses for Braille characters, which were documented cases of manual alphabet/numeral sign→color induced either through touching the dots or imagining them synesthesia as far as we are aware. when they heard or thought about a letter, number, or musi- It is also unclear how this type of synaesthesia, if it exists, is cal note. For some individuals, the colors seen were in Braille related to grapheme→color synaesthesia although we formation like an LED display, while others saw blocks of hypothesise that there would be a correspondence of colors associative colors. One participant (JF) had tactile-color across the different modalities. There is substantial evidence synesthesia exclusively for Braille, but not for other textures, that synesthetic colors can be transferred from one kind of or for dots arranged in unrelated spatial arrangements. symbolic representation to another. This can happen at multi- Interestingly,
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