# Can this woman really recognize color by touch? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 11, 2005, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729 "2005-10-11T09:42:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/1 "2005-10-11T09:42:18Z")
[Link](http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1564181.html). The only explanation I can think of is that she can feel the relative temperature differences of colors based on differences of emissivity. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/2 "2005-10-11T09:51:48Z")
Personally, I doubt it’s anything like that; my suspicions would be: -She’s not totally blind or -She’s using some kind of cold reading process to get her interviewer to confirm her guesses; “It’s not a _warm_ colour, is it?.. I didn’t think so” I remember hearing an even more fantastical claim a while back, that blind people could be taught to read ordinary text by fingertip - but the claim was not that they would do this by feeling the ink on the paper, but by some other mysterious process. It was claimed that anyone could learn to touch-read in this way. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/3 "2005-10-11T09:53:16Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > [Link](http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1564181.html). > > The only explanation I can think of is that she can feel the relative temperature differences of colors based on differences of emissivity. I remember hearing about a Russian girl in, I think, the 1970s, who could do this. Apparently, the story went that she had the cones that sense colour in your eyes, in her fingertips, albeit much more sparsely populated. So she couldn’t actually _see_ with her fingers, but there was just enough sensitivity there that the cones in them reported back to the brain via the nervous system. Sounds like bull to me, but who knows? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/4 "2005-10-11T09:58:03Z")
Another thing caught my eye (pardon the pun): Why would she need a blindfold if she’s blind? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/5 "2005-10-11T10:00:30Z")
Presumably to assuage the doubts of the audience; not that see-through blindfolds are particularly hard to rig up. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/6 "2005-10-11T10:08:47Z")
She was identifying the colour of volunteers clothes. That tells us all we need to know. Why conduct the experiment this peculiar way? Simple; she is reading the reactions of the volunteer. “Do I sense a warm colour?” she asks, while holding a hand on the person’s chest. Ask her to do the same thing to coloured sheets of paper, in a room with no-one else in it, and she wouldn’t have a clue. Still, you have to admire the bare-faced cheek of the standard media angle on these kind of stories. “A blind woman has baffled scientists”. No, she hasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/7 "2005-10-11T11:32:57Z")
There was a similar case in the 1960s. Life magazine published a story, along with a page of colored squares so you could try it yourself. This really stuck in my mind, because the damned ink came off on your fingers. In any event, Martin Gardner and James Randi published exposes in their own books and columns on these ladies. There’s no reason not to believe that they’re using ages-old methods that magicians use to perform similar stunts while blindfolded. (They can not only identify objects and colors, but drive cars blindfolded as well.) Randi claimed that he could see the characteristic “moves” magicians make, and that the women weren’t particularly sophisticated at it. Haven’t heard anything about this latest embodiment of the phenomenon, but I’d be very surprised if it was anything different. Let’s see her do it with her head completely covered with a bag supplied by her testers. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/8 "2005-10-11T11:44:50Z")
There are two possibilities. First, she could have discovered how to detect colour using touch. Second, she could be using the same techniques as stage magicians do to fool people. As an open minded sceptic, I would say both are possbilities but doing it the first way seems like doing it the hard way. I don’t think it would take a decent magician 20 years to teach her to cheat, but that’s how long she says it took her to develop an ability to read colour through her fingers. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_chao_goes_mu/32/3191_2.png) [@The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Chao_Goes_Mu)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/9 "2005-10-11T12:24:48Z")
You think she has special powers? Well, \*I \* can smell bullshit in Germany all the way from the United States! TaaDaaa! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/10 "2005-10-11T12:26:47Z")
Here you go – **Dermo-Optical Perception**. Loook at the links: [http://skepdic.com/dop.html](http://skepdic.com/dop.html) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/11 "2005-10-11T12:28:40Z")
Here’s an online article about a more recent test: [http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:20577444&ctrlInfo=Round18%3AMode18c%3ADocG%3AResult&ao=](http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:20577444&ctrlInfo=Round18%3AMode18c%3ADocG%3AResult&ao=) ---
**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/12 "2005-10-11T13:18:04Z")
Perhaps she should try for the [James Randi Million Dollar Challenge](http://www.randi.org/research/index.html). ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/13 "2005-10-11T22:14:50Z")
What Randi would do is tape bandages over the eyes, assuring the eyes are shut and there is no open space anywhere around the perimeter of the bandage. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/14 "2005-10-11T22:36:06Z")
Clearly this woman is a [super-villain](http://www.seanbaby.com/stupcom/10eyedman.htm) and she must be stopped. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/15 "2005-10-12T01:08:11Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > There are two possibilities. First, she could have discovered how to detect colour using touch. Second, she could be using the same techniques as stage magicians do to fool people. Or third, she may have [synaesthesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia), i.e. she really does see colours when she touches objects. (Not neccesarily the same colours _you_ would see if you looked at the same objects) ---
**Author:** ![MsMitey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@MsMitey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsMitey)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/16 "2005-10-12T02:59:59Z")
> [@Peter Morris](#): > > Or third, she may have [synaesthesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia), i.e. she really does see colours when she touches objects. I thought of this too, at first. But, IIRC, synaesthetes have a wire crossed in the brain such that when their eyes see color, their brain processes it as a touch (or smell, or sound). I believe their eyes still need to function properly in order to get a texture out of a color. My money’s on the cold reading. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/17 "2005-10-12T09:34:09Z")
> [@](#): > > I believe their eyes still need to function properly in order to get a texture out of a color. Its the other way around, the nerves in her fingers work to get a colour out of a texture. IANA medical expert, I know only what I’ve read, and we all know how inaccurate information on the Internet can be. However the article does say : > [@](#): > > Synaesthesia can even occur when one of the senses no longer functions properly, e.g., a person who can see colours when words are spoken can still see the colours if he becomes blind in later life. make of that what you will. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/18 "2005-10-12T11:42:14Z")
Yellow is smoother grained than red. Red is bumpy, blue is slick. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/19 "2005-10-12T13:05:09Z")
IIRC, Helen Keller’s favorite color was corduroy. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729/20 "2005-10-12T13:14:17Z")
> [@Peter Morris](#): > > Its the other way around, the nerves in her fingers work to get a colour out of a texture. Probably the nerves in her brain, but even this wouldn’t help, as she would not be able to distinguish different coloured samples of fabric with the same texture. Synaesthesia is interesting, but would not allow her to ascribe persistent, universal colour values to different objects - in what sense does a red apple feel like a red towel? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-this-woman-really-recognize-color-by-touch/325729.md?page=2)