cviii Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



Synaesthesia. 



This peculiar form of association which consists in the spontan- 

 eous appUcation of the data of one sense or group of sensations to 

 another without appreciable cause has recently received considerable 

 attention. When President Jordan described the fact that he discov- 

 ered that he was in the habit of associating certain colors with the 

 concepts of various letters or symbols probably few outside the tech- 

 nical students were aware of the existence of pgeudo-chrom^sthesia 

 or "photism." Sometime since, M. Claparede sent out 3600 circulars 

 of inquiry respecting this phenomenon and received 694 answers over 

 half of which were positive. The results ' have been studied by 

 Flournoy.^ Associate Professor Mary Calkins, of Wellesley College, 

 has recently given the subject a statistical study. ^ Curiously enough 

 the possession of such associations is regarded by these subjects as of 

 assistance in various ways. 



One says "If I hear an opera I can come home and play it by 

 colors; I know what chords make a certain combination of colors." 

 One subject, in speaking of the way the arbitrary form came to be 

 associated with number, said "the other forms have arisen from the 

 ways that I have used to remember." The present writer is aware 

 of a faint instance of such association which grew out of the 

 arrangement of the spots on dominoes — a mental trick to assist 

 in keeping a few numbers, particularly 5, in mind. Doubtless 

 many of the mental forms have grown up in the same way 

 and are simply ideographs One of Miss Calkin's students 

 said: "Colors do not look right unless a word is spelled right. For 

 instance I spelled permanent, the other day, with two a's, and it did 

 not look pale enough. 



It appears that the statistics do not prove that the color associa- 

 tions can be shown to have arisen from primitive associations of col- 

 ored objects though this is inherently most probable for almost all color 

 associations date back to childhood The color may be associated 

 with the sound or sight of a word or letter but more frequently with 

 both. 



Some uniformity was noted, thus: /was black or blackish in 15 

 cases out of 21 and positively colored in only one instance. was 

 white or whitish in 18 cases out of 22. But otherwise very little 

 constancy is observed. 



'Des Phenomenes de Synopsie, Paris, 1893. 

 ^Am. Journ, Psychology v. i. 



