"I have to translate the colors" :description and implications of a genuine case of phoneme color synaesthesia

The aim of the paper was to document further the case of VA who possesses colored speech sound synesthesia. To do so, different stimuli were presented to VA: isolated vowels, nonsense syllables, and words. VA systematically perceived a color for each phoneme and we observed that only the articulatory and acoustic factors linked with changes in phonemic category influenced the colors perceived. Semi-structured interviews indicated that in the context of conversation, VA had to translate color into phonemes into her constructed linguistic representations which has a cognitive cost. She also reported having a visual cognitive style in which the verbal dimension is almost non-existent. This is the first time that genuine phoneme color synesthesia has been described. In the discussion, we address several implications of this synesthesia: the cognitive cost of this stable system, the atypical speech perception that it implies, and its relation to a specific cognitive functioning