著者

伊藤 浩介

出版者

日本基礎心理学会

雑誌

基礎心理学研究 (ISSN:02877651)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, no.1, pp.104-109, 2020-09-30 (Released:2020-11-18)

参考文献数

21

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How should we define synesthesia? After more than a century of research, scientists have still not reached an agreement on what synesthesia is (and is not). The author’s opinion of this condition is that the disagreement on the definition of synesthesia is essentially a disagreement on determining what sensations are normal and what are unnormal. All different versions of the definition of synesthesia state, either explicitly or implicitly, that synesthesia is an extraordinary sensation, which is caused by the activation of a second sensory or cognitive pathway that is not normally activated by the inducing stimulus. In other words, the boundary between synesthesia and non-synesthesia depends on what sensations are considered normal, and this can only be judged subjectively. In so far as we consider synesthesia as an unnormal/extraordinary phenomenon, it is illogical to hope that there could be some objective criteria to distinguish synesthesia from non-synesthesia. The remedy is to assume continuity between synesthetic and non-synesthetic experiences.