Week #2 Constraints within Types and Indentification of Synesthesia
J Burns -
Did you know synesthesia is impacted by which languages you speak? The most common form of synesthesia, color grapheme, is coloration of letters, numbers, punctuation and other markings. Obviously, the characters which produce color differ by language. And, interestingly, some synesthetes say that the synesthetic colors are only produced in their native languages. One who was learning Danish talked about how the character ‘æ’ never possessed one color, like every other letter, because in English, it represents two letters.
Synesthetes who experience color-grapheme synesthesia have an interesting skill where they can quickly identify the number of characters or which specific ones even when they are unfocused on the letters. For example, synesthetes who see 7 as a dark blue would be able to identify the number from their peripheral vision because of the color. I personally have experienced this interesting skill because, to me, the number 4 is neon green. Even if I am not looking at the number 4, I can usually tell if one is present on the screen or page because of the distinct green marking. I also copied a screenshot from my google docs where I do my best to color match the numbers that have colors in my mind.
The synesthete above who learned Dutch spoke about how this ability was impacted because he didn’t have a distinct color for the fused æ, rather the color for a and e separately.
My reading from the MIT Press Edition collection on synesthesia also spoke about how frequently it was mentioned over the years in scientific papers. The phenomenon blew up in the 40’s, but many thought that it was made up. Even doctors who listened to synesthetes treated their peculiar experiences were symptoms of disorders rather than a condition of its own. This makes sense as we use our five senses to identify the problem, and if our vision or hearing were suddenly impacted, one would think there was an underlying cause. Of course, this is because those doctors were operating under the false assumption that it was new, since they didn’t understand that synesthetes posses their abilities often from childhood.
Other professors theorized that children had associated the colors from fridge magnets with the letters they were on and this was why synesthetes thought they saw colors, but this, too, was false. Not only did the children not remember the refrigerator magnets, but synesthetes with similar associations hadn’t shared alphabet magnet sets. Conversely, family members who could have shared magnet sets had different ways of viewing the letter or altogether different forms of synesthesia.
It would take much more advanced scientific methods, including high quality imaging, for scientists to believe synesthetes, thus studying the phenomenon, which explains why it wasn’t looked at again until the 90’s.
Information from Cytowic, R. E. (2018). Synesthesia: A Union of The Senses. MIT Press.
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