Enhanced divergent creativity and visual-spatial abilities in different types of Synaesthesia

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to test the relationship between different types of synaesthesia and their involvement in art, creative and visual abilities. We tested 20 grapheme-colour, 18 sound-colour, 20 grapheme-colour-and-sound-colour and 20 sequence-space synaesthetes. We assessed the number of artistic professions amongst synaesthetes, their involvement in art, as well as their abilities in psychometric tests of divergent and convergent creativity, and visual and visual-spatial working memory. Results show a higher prevalence of artists amongst synaesthetes, especially sound-colour synaesthetes. Sound-colour synaesthetes also showed a higher involvement in artistic activities overall, while grapheme-colour and sequence-space synaesthetes showed higher involvement in visual art. Only grapheme-colour-and-sound-colour synaesthetes showed significantly higher abilities in basic creative production. Additionally, synaesthetes overall scored higher in visual-spatial working memory. We conclude that synaesthetes’ higher involvement in art is not necessarily reflected in their basic creative abilities. Moreover, the relationship between visual-spatial abilities and creativity appears to be rather limited.