Mapping the Intersensory Regions of Perceptual Space

Abstract

The two studies reported were conducted within the framework of a spatial model for what may be termed synesthetic behavior, i.e., behavior which can be conceptualized as reflecting perceptual or associative alignment between sensory attributes from different sense-modalities. Such alignment-in accordance with the principles set forth by Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgoodl-is suggested by data from studies of synesthetic imagery, of the sensory-unity doctrine, of purported cross-modal effects on psychophysical judgments, of phonetic symbolism, and of metaphorical extensions of word usage. The model here utilized represents elementary attributes of stimuli with independent effects on behavior as orthogonal dimensions in a Euclidean space and represents stimulus-objects describable by such attributes as points in that space. This permits implication from the synesthetic literature of intersensory dimensions in perceptual or cognitive space, i.e. of dimensions which are significantly descriptive of sensory inputs from more than one modality. It also suggests that a first step to a comprehensive theory of synesthetic behavior must be to obtain a precise and comprehensive description of the intersensory regions of perceptual space. Previous papers have offered suggestions on this matter, but the suggestions have so varied in directness and emphasis that they are, as a group, unsystematic and filled with mutual contradictions.2 Most of them had the