Echoes from the past: synaesthetic colour associations reflect childhood gender stereotypes

Grapheme–colour synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which linguistic symbols evoke consistent colour sensations. Synaesthesia is believed to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, but how these factors interact to create specific associations in specific individuals is poorly understood. In this paper, we show that a grapheme–colour association in adult synaesthetes can be traced to a particular environmental effect at a particular moment in childhood. We propose a model in which specific grapheme–colour associations are ‘locked in’ during development in children predisposed to become synaesthetes, whereas grapheme–colour associations remain flexible in non-synaesthetes. We exploit Western gender–colour stereotypes to test our model: we found that young girls in general tend to associate their first initial with the colour pink. Consistent with our model, adult female synaesthetes are influenced by their childhood environment: they associate their first initial with pink. Adult female non-synaesthetes do not show this bias. Instead, in our study, non-synaesthetes tended to associate their first initial with their current favourite colour. The results thus support the ‘locking in’ model of synaesthesia, suggesting that synaesthetic associations can be used as a ‘time capsule’, revealing childhood influences on adult linguistic associations. Grapheme–colour synaesthesia may thus offer an extraordinary opportunity to study linguistic development.