Verbal synesthesiae of colors, emotions, and days of the week

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish cross-cultural distribution of some verbal synesthesiae and their dependency upon semantic factors of evaluation, potency, and activity. There participated in it groups of S s from the U.S.A., Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Subjects compared verbal series of colors and emotions, colors and days in the week, and emotions and days in the week. Most correlations among these groups were significant, although not extremely high. The correlations were lower between the frequencies of responses and D values, achieved from semantic differential scores, which express the degree of similarity among the semantic profiles of words.