Stimulus-Parity Synaesthesia versus Stimulus-Dichotomy Synaesthesia: Odd, Even or Something Else?

Abstract

In stimulus-parity synaesthesia, a range of stimuli—for example, letters, numbers, weekdays, months, and colours (the inducers)—elicit an automatic feeling of oddness or evenness (the concurrent). This phenomenon was first described by Théodore Flournoy in 1893, and has only recently been “rediscovered.” Here, we describe an individual who experiences a comparable phenomenon, but uses the labels negative and positive rather than odd and even. Stimulus-parity synaesthesia may be broader than first supposed, and it is important that assessments are sensitive to this breadth.