Hey guys! I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m writing a book about a character of mine who is both blind and has Synesthesia. I have a few questions. (Actually, quite a few now that I think about it)
My character, Harper, is blind. However, her reaction to touching certain materials is hearing a low hum. Since she’s never actually seen the objects, is that still possible?
I imagine this would make it easier for her to navigate her world, as she would know when she was bumping into someone. Do you know of anyone who has the same experience?
Is there any form of synesthesia that would also apply if the one I described above (touching causes her to hear something) is not possible?
Is it reasonable to assume that she has grown reliant on her synesthesia, and doesn’t use hearing to find her way around unfamiliar environments?
She is legally blind and can’t see at all. Like, black curtain. However, due to her synesthesia is it reasonable to assume she can babysit and care for small children? The children she’s looking after are older, around 8-10. Is it possible for her to be blind, and yet still keep them safe?
Is it illegal for someone to refuse to hire her because she is blind?
Thanks! I’m sorry for dumping this on you all at once. Anyway, answers are wanted and cherished. Have a nice day!
I have never actually heard of a case of tactile-auditory synaesthesia like this, but given the wide range of synaesthesias that do exist, there is no reason to think that this would not be possible. I am puzzled, however, as to why you think the fact that she has never seen the things she is touching, and getting hums from, might be at all relevant.
Why would it make navigating easier? She would know when she was bumping into someone or something by feeling the bump. A synaesthetic hum accompanying that bump would not add any new information.
Are you perhaps under the impression that in synaesthesia one sort of sensation replaces the other, so that somebody with tactile-auditory synaesthesia would not feel things at all, but hear things instead, in response to tactile stimuli? If so, you have a serious misapprehension about the nature of synaesthesia. Synaesthetics do not lose access to the normal sensations that are caused by particular sorts of stimuli, rather, they have additional sensations, in another sense mode, accompanying the normal sensations. For example, a synaesthetic who has color responses to musical notes would still hear the notes, the same as anyone else, but would also have an experience of a color accompanying each note. C# might evoke light green, or whatever, but they would still hear the C# note.
As I have said, there is no reason that I am aware of to think that tactile-auditory synaesthesia is not possible, but no sort of synaesthesia is anything like what I suspect you think synaesthesia is like.
The technology of tactile-visual sensory substitution, which translates visual information (from a TV camera) into a tactile form that a blind person can sense, may be closer to what you have in mind than synaesthesia, although, even here, one does not lose one’s original tactile sense, although (with a machine) it can be used to take in visual information. (There are also auditory-visual substitution systems which translate visual information into auditory form.)
No. Most blind people rely heavily on auditory information to find their way about (and often are able to get a lot more information about the spatial layout of their surroundings from auditory cues than many sighted people would think possible). As already stated, so far as I can see having tactile-auditory synaesthesia would not help with navigation at all. In fact it seems likely that it would make things more difficult, because the synaesthetic “hums” might distract from, get confused with, or even drown out the subtle auditory cues that most blind people rely upon for navigation. (This is also a problem for auditory-visual substitution systems.)
Well, I would not have been comfortable entrusting my children to the sole care of a blind person when they were young. Blind people can be surprisingly competent at many sorts of task, but children are unpredictable, and can move fast and sometimes fairly silently, and can quickly get themselves into trouble in all sorts of ways. A blind person could actually probably manage small babies (before they can crawl) better than older children.
Again, the synaesthesia is irrelevant here.
Of course, if the job depends on being able to see, as many jobs (including childcare, I should say) do.
Are you saying that you can detect certain sounds by feeling the vibrations in your body? That may well be so, but it is not synaesthesia.
If you mean something different, perhaps you could explain a little more clearly what you do mean, because what you have said so far is not clear at all. Are you completely deaf? What leads you to believe that you have synaesthesia? What do you think “synaesthesia” means?
Synaesthesia is a not a means by which people can get sensory information about their environment that they do not otherwise have access to, it is a condition where sensations experienced through one sense mode, in the normal way, are regularly accompanied by sensations of another sense mode, as in the example I gave above, where someone “sees” light green whenever they hear the note C#. [It might be more accurate to say that they imagine light green rather than literally see it, but, for a true synaesthete, that “imagining” would be involuntary and automatic, unlike typical episodes of imagining, and the pairing between particular notes (or whatever) and particular colors (or whatever) is stable and reliable.]
I’m assuming that if my character, Harper, isn’t wearing shoes she’ll be able to tell that she’s standing on a wood floor. I guess this would extend to her being able to know where she is because she’s hearing something, and then she can reorient herself, like ‘Oh, i’m on the rag carpet in the neighbor’s living room, so I can turn and end up in the kitchen’. As for the childcare the kids she’s taking care of are very well behaved and not very sporty.
I know what synesthesia is, but if she knows what material she’s bumping into it gives her a clue on where she is. Harper wasn’t always blind, she could see until she was ten, so she knows what most objects are.
I’ll assume she can care for kids. Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful replies, the research is very thorough
Of course she’ll be able to tell she’s standing on a rag carpet if she’s barefoot-- can’t you? For that matter, even if she’s wearing shoes, she may well know roughly what she’s standing on from a difference in the way her shoes sink into the carpet or don’t sink into the hardwood.
Most regular blind people could probably do all that. Having tactile-auditory synaesthesia would not make it any easier, and would very likely make it harder.
You have never been a parent, have you?
I do not think you do know what it is. Synaesthesia does not provide people with information about their environment that they are not already getting through their regular senses. (It may have some effects on how they pay attention to some of that information, but those effects are more likely to more often be a minor hindrance to actually dealing with the world rather than any sort of help.) If someone can’t already tell what sort of floor they are standing on via regular touch they are not going to learn any more about it by any “hums” that the feel of the floor on their feet might evoke in them.
Sure, but it ain’t synaesthesia, it is haptic sensing of certain types of vibrations, ones that the non-hearing-impaired can also sense auditorily. (It also does not have much to do with what the OP imagines synaesthesia to be.)
You’re correct. Just thought it was relevant to the extraordinary mental finesse that can be obtained when unusual sensory pathways are re-interpreted.
No, I can detect all sounds by vibration. I “hear” through what hearing people would think of as vibration. I hear through bone conduction which is completely different from air conduction. It’s the idea of hearing like a deaf person or seeing like a blind/low vision person…does that make any sense?
Well, the "no " does not make any sense to me, because otherwise you seem to be agreeing with what I said: you can detect and experience some sounds by feeling the vibrations (which are the sound), in your body. That certainly happens - it is what Evelyn Glennie does - but it is not synaesthesia. (And, of course, people with normal hearing feel sounds in this way too.)
If you can really detect “all sounds,” you are not deaf.
I am also confused here – what information is this hum giving her that she doesn’t already have by feeling the material with her feet? Most people could tell if they were on a wooden floor vs. a marble floor or a carpet or something…
Well, I must say, i’m a minor. Writing a book. I wouldn’t be a parent since I;m fairly sure you weren’t when you were, say, 13? And BTW, kids would be some of my younger cousins, I’m basing he image off of them. Thanks for your answers, but i’m going to close the thread now. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Everybody’s comments can get goofed on, if not done mean-spiritedly.<—Particularly in this forum, General Questions, where the tone, in general, is quite civil, barring the odd fart joke.
I’ll take “thanks for the compliment” as sarcasm. But like the wind in Caesar, it touches me not.
