Psychology

Dr Julia Simner

Photograph of Dr Julia Simner
Position
Reader
Email
j.simner@ed.ac.uk
Phone
0131 650 3450
Location
F31 (7GS)
Research Interests
I run the Synaesthesia & Sensory Integration Lab, where we examine cross-modal mappings in people with synaesthesia and in the population at large.
Biography

Synaesthesia is an inherited condition in which ordinary activities trigger extra-ordinary experiences. For example, colours may be perceived from sounds, or shapes experienced from tastes. Synaesthesia can cause a direct crossing of the senses, or be mediated by higher level processing, such as language. For instance, printed or spoken words can induce a sensation of taste in the mouth (lexical-gustatory synaesthesia) or an visual impression of colour (lexical-chromatic synaesthesia). The aim of my research is to examine the cognitive, linguistic, and developmental basis of synaesthesia, and what the condition might tell us about the functioning of memory and language more generally. We also examine sensory integration in the general population, and how sensation influences language processing (and vice versa).

Representative Publications

  1. Simner & Ward (2006). Taste of words on the tip of the tongue. Nature 444, 438.
  2. Simner, J et al. (2009). Early detection of markers for synaesthesia in childhood populations Brain 132; 57–64.
  3. Simner, J (2007). Beyond perception: Synaesthesia as a psycholinguistic phenomenon. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, 23-29.
  4. Simner, J & Holenstein, E (2007). Ordinal linguistic personification: The systematic attribution of animate qualities to the linguistic units of ordinal sequences. J. of Cogn. Neurosci. 19, 694–703.

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

  • KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Simner, J. Synaesthesia and personality. Keynote speech presented at the International Meeting of the German Synaesthesia Association. Hanover, Germany, November 2008.
  • Simner, J. The ‘growth’ of synaesthesia. Paper presented at the 7th Annual National Conference of the American Synaesthesia Association. Hamilton, Ontario, September 2008.
  • Simner, J. The development and prevalence of childhood synaesthesia. Paper presented at the 4th Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. Edinburgh, March 2008.
  • Simner, J. Colour language, literally: Mechanisms of language-colour synaesthesia. Paper presented at Progress in Colour Studies. Glasgow, July 2008.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia in individuals with more than one variant. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. Oxford, March 2007.
  • Simner, J. Language and Development in Synaesthesia. Invited paper presented at the ICN special seminar series, UCL, London. May 2006.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthetic sensation is induced in tip-of-tongue states. Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. March 2006.
  • Simner, J. The prevalence and male-female distribution of synaesthesia. Paper presented at the XIVth Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Leiden. 2005.
  • Simner, J. Associating colours to letters: What is a typical synaesthetic association? Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on Synaesthesia and the Synaesthetic Arts, University of Granada, Spain. July 2005.
  • Simner, J. et al. The Prevalence and Female:Male Distribution of Synaesthesia Annual General Meeting and Conference of the UK Synaesthesia Association. March 2005.
  • Simner, J. What synaesthesia can tell us about language processing. Proceedings of AMLaP 2004, Aix-en-Provence, France. 2004.
  • Simner, J., Pickering, M.J. Generating associations of cause and consequence. Proceedings of the 17th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Maryland, VR. 2004.
  • Simner, J., & Pickering, M.J. Anticipating cause and consequence during text comprehension. Proceedings of AMLaP 2003, Glasgow, UK. 2003.
  • Simner, J., Garnham, A. On- and off-line processing of ‘do it’ coreference. Proceedings of the 16th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, MIT, Cambridge, MA. 2003.
  • Ward, J., & Simner, J. Developmental neuropsychology of synaesthesia: The differing roles of nature & nurture. Proceedings of the BNS. National Hospital, London. 2003.

Books, Chapters & Edited Volumes

  • Simner, J., & Hubbard, E.M. The Oxford Handbook of Synaesthesia. Oxford University Press: Oxford (due 2012).
  • Simner, J Synesthesia. In Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour. V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) Elsevier: San Diego (in press).
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia in Colour. In New Directions in Colour Studies. Biggam, C.P., Hough, C.A., Kay, C.J. and Simmons, D.R. (Eds.) John Benjamins Publishing Company (2010).
  • Simner, J. (Ed.). Synaesthesia and visuo-spatial forms [Special section]. Cortex, 45, 1190-1278. (2009).
  • Simner, J. An introduction to ordinal linguistic personification, (Synästhetische Personifizierung von Zahlen und Buchstaben; pp. 131-134 (English; 18-22 German). In Synästhesie der Gefühle. Tagungsband zur Konferenz "Die fröhliche Sieben" - Synästhesie, Personifikation und Identifikation, Synaisthesis. J. Sinha (Ed.) Luxemburg (2009).
  • Simner, J. Lexical-gustatory synesthesia. Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. U. Windhorst, M. Binder & N. Hirokawa (Eds). Springer Verlag GmbH: Heidelberg, pp. 2149-2152 (2009).

Recent Conferences

  • Simner, J. The Synaesthetic Continuum. Keynote speech presented at American Synaesthesia Association. Vanderbilt University, USA, October 2010.
  • Simner, J. What Colour does that Feel? Paper presented at Artecitta, Granada, Spain. 2009.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia: A foundation for savantism? Paper presented at ESCOP, Krakow, Poland, 2009.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia and the Merging of the Senses. Paper presented at Neuroact, Marburg, Germany, 2009.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia: cross-modal qualities of perception. Paper presented at the European Science Foundation seminars on Qualities in Perception. Trento, Italy, 2009.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia and personality. Keynote speech presented at the International Meeting of the German Synaesthesia Association. Hanover, Germany, November 2008.
  • Simner, J. The ‘growth’ of synaesthesia. Paper presented at the 7th Annual National Conference of the American Synaesthesia Association. Hamilton, Ontario, September 2008.
  • Simner, J. The development and prevalence of childhood synaesthesia. Paper presented at the 4th Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. Edinburgh, March 2008.
  • Simner, J. Colour language, literally: Mechanisms of language-colour synaesthesia. Paper presented at Progress in Colour Studies. Glasgow, July 2008.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthesia in individuals with more than one variant. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. Oxford, March 2007.
  • Simner, J. Language and Development in Synaesthesia. Invited paper presented at the ICN special seminar series, UCL, London. May 2006.
  • Simner, J. Synaesthetic sensation is induced in tip-of-tongue states. Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association. March 2006.
  • Simner, J. The prevalence and male-female distribution of synaesthesia. Paper presented at the XIVth Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Leiden. 2005.
  • Simner, J. Associating colours to letters: What is a typical synaesthetic association? Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on Synaesthesia and the Synaesthetic Arts, University of Granada, Spain. July 2005.
  • Simner, J. et al. The Prevalence and Female:Male Distribution of Synaesthesia Annual General Meeting and Conference of the UK Synaesthesia Association. March 2005.
  • Simner, J. What synaesthesia can tell us about language processing. Proceedings of AMLaP 2004, Aix-en-Provence, France. 2004.
  • Simner, J., Pickering, M.J. Generating associations of cause and consequence. Proceedings of the 17th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Maryland, VR. 2004.
  • Simner, J., & Pickering, M.J. Anticipating cause and consequence during text comprehension. Proceedings of AMLaP 2003, Glasgow, UK. 2003.
  • Simner, J., Garnham, A. On- and off-line processing of ‘do it’ coreference. Proceedings of the 16th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, MIT, Cambridge, MA. 2003.
  • Ward, J., & Simner, J. Developmental neuropsychology of synaesthesia: The differing roles of nature & nurture. Proceedings of the BNS. National Hospital, London. 2003.

Public dissemination of research findings

Grants and awards

  • 2005 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship: Psycholinguistic investigations of linguistic synaesthesias.
  • 2002-05 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship: The effect of co-reference on memory representations.
  • 2002 ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship.
  • 2002-3 British Academy Small Grant: Co-reference and memory.
  • 2003-05 University of Edinburgh Developmental Trust Awards (3).
Students supervised
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