Superior learning in synesthetes: Consistent grapheme-color associations facilitate statistical learning.

In synesthesia activation in one sensory domain, such as smell or sound, triggers an involuntary and unusual secondary sensory or cognitive experience. In the present study, we ask whether the added sensory experience of synesthesia can aid statistical learning-the ability to track environmental regularities in order to segment continuous information. To investigate this, we measured statistical learning outcomes, using an aurally presented artificial language, in two groups of synesthetes alongside controls and simulated the multimodal experience of synesthesia in non-synesthetes.