Synesthesia, hallucination, and autism.

Synesthesia literally means a "union of the senses" whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together in experience (1, 2, 3). For example, some synesthetes experience a color when they hear a sound, although many instances of synesthesia also occur entirely within the visual sense. In this paper, I first mainly engage critically with Sollberger's view that there is reason to think that at least some synesthetic experiences can be viewed as truly veridical perceptions, and not as illusions or hallucinations (4).

Aspects of the unity of consciousness and everyday memory failures.

We argue that analyzing everyday memory failures in terms of the "unity of consciousness" can elucidate the bases of such failures. A perfect unity amongst one's mental states is rare. In extreme cases the unity of consciousness can breakdown in dramatic fashion (e.

Inferring the mental processes of other minds.

In 4 experiments, the authors examined how several variables influence the quality and quantity of information that people use to make judgments about other people. The results showed that when possible, participants consistently responded appropriately to variables that influenced information that they used to make inferences about other minds. The results also suggested that under circumstances with no opportunity to contrast behavior in different situations, people might not be sensitive to the quality and quantity of information present.