So, fun! Today she told me that weekdays have pictures and numbers have colors–though not, apparently, letters. (Math is her favorite thing, may have something to do with it?) Monday has a bunny and Friday is a smoothie. Thursday is a duck. 1 is black, 2 is grey, 8 is pink, 10 is navy, and all the multiples of 10 are striped–20 is navy with yellow stripes. And so on.
The synesthesia test site seems to be way too involved and complex for a 6yo child. Anyone know of other things that would be simpler? I was thinking I’d get her to draw her numbers tomorrow.
I wonder… are the pictures/colors associated with the days/numbers because that’s the way they are presented in her classrooom posters or textbooks? Like maybe they have a big calendar on the wall and there are pictures in the little boxes.
Just a thought, but maybe completely wrong. If she does in fact have synesthesia then I agree, that will indeed be fun to learn about how she views the world! Cool!
The pictures have nothing to do with anything that I can tell. I am her teacher–we homeschool–so I know I have never put up pictures of ducks and smoothies associated with the days of the week. I’m not so sure about the colors, but I know I never showed her stripy multiples of 10. She says that the numbers don’t have a place, though.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait around and see how things turn out–I don’t know how to figure out whether she’s just being fanciful or really thinks of 6 as bright yellow. OTOH, she went through the colors again last night and they were all exactly the same, even the two shades of green for 4 and 5.
For what it’s worth: I do not have synesthesia (no crossover of senses, or actually seeing certain colours in things that do not have those colours), but I have had specific, unchanging colour associations to digits as far back as I can remember.
I’m curious. I don’t think of myself as having it but I definitely think of letters as having colors. Not numbers–I’m not so interested in them, but letters for sure. And in some cases tastes and personalities. Is that related to synathesia, or is it totally different?
I seem to recall that all the color-by-numbers books I had as a kid had similar color-to-number assignments. I don’t remember now what they were, but I used to!
My understanding of the concept of synesthesia is that it involves actually percieveing the world differently. That is, actually seeing colours in letters or digits: synesthesia. Only associating them with colours, even if strongly: not synesthesia. However, I could certainly be wrong about that. And wikipedia mentions personalities, and other more conceptual things not directly related to how one percieves the world through one’s senses:
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](Synesthesia - Wikipedia)This may be, as so many brain things, a question of spectrums, where associating things with colours is simply a weaker version of the same kinds of neural connections that cause others to actually see colours in things.
Me too. I can also assure you that the letter K tastes like celery and the number 3 is a bit of an asshole (but only when rendered with the top of the number as a straight line). I am not a synesthete.
Nope. For me, it’s a straight line. I assume you’re saying that weeks, months, years, and so on “loop back around”, so that, for example, every January is at the same point on the circumference of the spiral, but further along the length of it. I get that, but I definitely don’t think of it that way.
Yes, exactly. I don’t pretend I can see the whole thing! But it has always been clear to me that it just ‘is’ that way. I never got the timeline, unless you want to loop it around and around.
And some letters do have flavors and odors associated, and rarely but sometimes actual, and personalities are rare too. Some numbers have feelings. Again, it isn’t constant, though, and I wouldn’t ever have noticed it without this thread making me think of it. I have never heard of this before.
I think of time as an infinite line that stretches away from me in either direction. I find it actually interesting and surprising you envision it as some kind of spiral or helix, gurujulp.
I envision the months of the year arranged a certain way, because of a small business-card sized calendar my dad gave me when I was a kid. It had January through September on the top row, and October through December on the bottom row. Not sure why it was split so unevenly, but ever since, that’s how I see them. We just moved down a row and way over to the left where October starts.
I’m not synesthesic, but I think it’s common knowledge that Thursdays are brown.
I think the simplest thing to do would be to write the numbers in different colors (one pink, two blue, three orange), point to the number, and ask her what color it is without saying the number itself, i.e. point and ask “What color is this?” If she correctly names the colors or says that the color is wrong, it would indicate that she is not actually perceiving the numbers as different colors but for whatever reason has made some association. If she says that the pink one is actually black, that would point to possibly sythesia or she is just jerking you around.
I think having her write or whatever will just reveal whatever associations she may have in her head. Just because she expresses or associates them in a certain way doesn’t mean she perceives them that way though.
I was trying to come up with something along the lines of what Baracus said, so that you could “test” her. I don’t have a better idea to offer myself, but I wonder how “confirmed” synesthesics would perceive the stimuli presented in that manner—would it be as he described, and the synestetic color perceptually trumps the “real” color? Or would the “real” color of the number combine with “her” color for it (like, if it were a number she thinks of as light blue and the number you showed her is yellow, would the result look greenish to her)? Or would each perception be experienced as distinct from the other (like hearing two different conversations simultaneously, but not having any trouble following along with them or distinguishing between the two)? Meaning, would she tell you that you’d colored the number, say, turquoise, but she still also “sees” it as whatever color she said she had perceived it as being before?
