Personality profile of child synaesthetes

Rinaldi, Louisa; Smees, Rebecca; Carmichael, Duncan; Simner, Julia

Abstract

Previous research into personality and synaesthesia has focused on adult populations and yielded mixed results. One particular challenge has been to distinguish traits associated with synaesthesia, from traits associated with the ways in which synaesthetes were recruited. In the current study we looked at the synaesthetic personality in childhood, and resolved sampling issues by screening the student bodies of 22 primary schools in the South East of England (n= 3387; children aged 6 to 11 years old). We screened children for two types of synaesthesia (grapheme-colour synaesthesia and sequence-personality synaesthesia) and tested their personalities using both child-report and parent-report measures. We found strong support for synaesthesia being associated with high Openness to Experience, a personality trait linked to intelligence and creativity. Both synaesthesia subtypes showed this feature, supporting previous research in adults (Banissy et al., 2013; Chun & Hupé, 2016; Rouw & Scholte, 2016). We additionally found low Extraversion in grapheme-colour synaesthetes and high Conscientiousness in sequence-personality synaesthetes. We discuss our results with reference to earlier recruitment issues, and as to how perceptual differences such as synaesthesia might link to trait-differences in personality.

Citation

Rinaldi, L., Smees, R., Carmichael, D., & Simner, J. (2020). Personality profile of child synaesthetes. Frontiers in Bioscience, 12, 162-182

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 5, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 13, 2019
• Print ISSN: 1093-9946
• Electronic ISSN: 1093-4715
• Publisher: Bioscience Research Institute
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Pages: 162-182
• Keywords: synaesthesia, personality, children, grapheme-colour, ordinal linguistic personification
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2316597
• PMID: 32114456