Coloured Letters and Numbers (CLaN): A reliable factor-analysis based synaesthesia questionnaire

Synaesthesia is a heterogeneous phenomenon, even when considering one particular sub-type. The purpose of this study was to design a reliable and valid questionnaire for grapheme-colour synaesthesia that captures this heterogeneity. By the means of a large sample of 628 synaesthetes and a factor analysis, we created the Coloured Letters and Numbers (CLaN) questionnaire with 16 items loading on 4 different factors (i.e., localisation, automaticity/attention, deliberate use, and longitudinal changes). These factors were externally validated with tests which are widely used in the field of synaesthesia research. The questionnaire showed good test–retest reliability and construct validity (i.e., internally and externally). Our findings are discussed in the light of current theories and new ideas in synaesthesia research. More generally, the questionnaire is a useful tool which can be widely used in synaesthesia research to reveal the influence of individual differences on various performance measures and will be useful in generating new hypotheses.

Imagery of Early Christian Rituals in the Greek Physiologus

The paper focuses on the imagery of early Christian rituals (esp. of the eucharist and baptism) as they are found in allegorical interpretations of beasts in the Greek Physiologus and trace the way of selected motifs from the New Testament to this first Christian interpretation of nature in context of early Christian literature and theology. A special attention is given to the pelican, which is one of the most famous symbols of the eucharist, and to impressive baptismal imageries in the chapter on the eagle, on the snake and in some other chapters. The aim of the analysis is to explore the theological roots of the ritual imagery of Physiologus and to show that this work of early Egyptian Christianity is anything but 'unsakramental' as argued by E. Peterson (1959).

Apes’ tracking of objects and collections

Recent research suggests that great apes are less vulnerable to cohesion violations than human infants are. In contrast to human infants, apes successfully track nonsolid substances or split solid objects through occlusion (Cacchione & Call, 2010a; Cacchione, Hrubesch, & Call, 2012, 2013). The present study aims to investigate whether the lower vulnerability of great apes to cohesion violations also manifests when they are tracking collections. While even very young human infants appreciate the continuous existence of solid bound objects, they fail to show similar intuitions when tracking collections of objects (Chiang & Wynn, 2000). In a manual search task inspired by recent infant research, we tested whether humans’ closest relatives, the great apes, showed a similar contrast in their reasoning about single solid objects and objects within collections. The results suggest that, in contrast to human infants, great apes appreciate the continuous existence of objects within collections and successfully track them through occlusion. This confirms the view that great apes are generally less vulnerable to cohesion violations than human infants.