Chen Na

The University of Tokyo | Todai · Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies

Kandinsky proposed a correspondence theory that suggests associations between specific colors and shapes (i.e., circle-blue, square-red, triangle-yellow). Makin and Wuerger tested the theory using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and did not find clear evidence for Kandinsky's color-shape associations among British participants. In the present s...

Red color signals dominance in both animals and humans. This study investigated whether a red background color influences the perception of dominance in human faces and geometric shapes. The facial stimuli consisted of computer-generated faces, quantitatively morphed into nine levels of dominance, ranging from less dominant to more dominant. This i...

Introduction Various genetic mutations have been implicated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some candidate genes for ASD are known to be related to signal transduction and may be involved in hand development as well as neurodevelopment. Therefore, although subtle, anatomical variations in hand configurations may be observed in individuals with A...

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). However, little has been known on the effect of color on sex recognition of human bodies. This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex, and the effect of contextual information. Visual stimuli were created using body si...

Introduction Adults possess a natural inclination to associate sensory cues derived from distinct modalities, such as the pairing of sweet with pink. However, studies exploring crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in the sensory pairing of visual features and tastes, are scant, leaving unanswered questions regarding the developmenta...

Colors have been reported to be associated with genders (e.g., reddish color-females). Here, we investigated color-gender associations (red-female/green-male) among Japanese participants using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N = 23), participants were instructed to in...

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or higher levels of autistic traits have atypical characteristics in sensory processing. Atypicalities have been reported for proprioceptive judgments, which are tightly related to internal bodily representations underlying position sense. However, no research has directly investigated whether self-bodily...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red-female). This study explored whether background color could influence the gender categorization of human faces. Visual stimuli were generated from faces whose sexually dimorphic content was morphed monotonically from female to male perception. The face stimulus was presented upright (Experiment 1) and inv...

Each basic taste can be perceived differently due to stored knowledge and differences in receptor properties. Depending on how these tastes are perceived, eating behavior may change. In this study, we examined the relationships between subjective feelings of taste perception, taste preferences, and autistic traits with the behavior of adding flavor...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle-red, triangle-yellow, and square-blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to indicate whether...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red–female, blue–male). This study explored whether red background color could influence the gender categorization of human faces. Visual stimuli were generated from faces whose sexually dimorphic content was morphed monotonically from female to male perception. The face stimulus was presented upright (Experi...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 ( N = 23), participants were instructed to indica...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex. Visual stimuli were created using body silhouettes with varying along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male perceptions. These stimuli were presented in conjunction wit...

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder exhibit atypical taste perception and eating behaviours. However, little is known about the effect of autistic traits on eating behaviours in the general population. This study explored the relationships between autistic traits, taste preferences, taste perceptions, and eating behaviours among Japanese popu...

Crossmodal correspondences between visual features (e.g., color/shape) and tastes have been extensively documented in recent years. Visual colors and shapes have been shown to consensually match to specific tastes. Meanwhile, individuals with autism spectrum disorder are reported to have atypical sensory processing and deficits in multisensory inte...

Non-synesthetic people tend to systematically associate certain shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, square–blue). In the present study, we investigated whether such color–shape associations influence illusory conjunctions. Two letters were centrally presented, while two colored-shape stimuli were presented in the perip...

Studies have contended that neurotypical Japanese individuals exhibit consistent color-shape associations (red-circle, yellow-triangle, and blue-square) and those color-shape associations could be constructed by common semantic information between colors and shapes through learning and/or language experiences. Here, we conducted two experiments usi...

Preferences for colors and geometric shapes vary considerably across individuals. Studies have demonstrated these variations in preference separately for colors and shapes, but the relationships between preference variations for colors and shapes are not yet known. By measuring individual preferences for basic colors and shapes, we found that color...

Chen et al (In prepare) found that deaf people have established similar pattern of color-shape associations with hearing people, such as circle-red, triangle-yellow, and squareblue links. This result indicated that phonological information might have little effect on color-shape associations. However, the strength and consistency of color-shape ass...

Albertazzi et al. (2013) showed naturally biased associations between geometric shapes and colors in Italian participants, suggesting that the “warmth” and “lightness” of color might account for the color–shape associations. In the present study, we replicated the previous study in Japanese participants to examine whether color–shape associations w...

Recent studies have showed that color-shape associations would be likely immune against cultural background and could be interpreted by congruent semantic information of warmth perception. Nevertheless, effects of phonological character of shapes and colors on color-shape associations were unclear. Therefore, in the present study, we compared color...

Studies have found that preferences for visual features such as colors and shapes reveal systematic tendencies, certain colors and shapes were more liked than others [1, 8, 9, 11, 13]. However, little has been known about the relationship between preferences for color and shape. Here, using an individual differences approach, we investigated whethe...