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Is synaesthesia a dominantly female trait?

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 22:43 authored by Julia SimnerJulia Simner, Duncan A Carmichael
Synaesthesia is a familial condition that gives rise to unusual secondary percepts. We present a large-scale prevalence study which informs our ideas on whether the condition is more prevalent in men or women. A number of studies over the last 20 years have suggested the condition is found more commonly in women, with up to six times more female synaesthetes than male. Other studies attributed this female bias to merely a recruitment confound: women synaesthetes may be more likely to self-refer for study. We offer two pieces of evidence that there is no extreme female bias in synaesthesia: first we re-analyse previous reports of very large female biases to show again that they likely arose from self-referral or other methodological issues. Second, we present the largest published prevalence study to date on grapheme?colour synaesthesia in which our prevalence (1.39% of the population) replicates our earlier estimates (and in which we demonstrate no strong female bias even with sufficient power to detect such a difference.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Cognitive Neuroscience

ISSN

1758-8928

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

2-3

Volume

6

Page range

68-76

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-10-07

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2015-10-07

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2015-10-07

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