Saturday, August 18, 2012

Anyone know how synesthesia works?

In one form of synesthesia, letters have intrinsic colours. I remember reading about a child with synesthesia learning her letters and having trouble with the fact that you can add a line to a P to make it into an R. She saw how adding the line changed the shape, but didn't understand how to turn it from a yellow letter into a red letter. (It turned out when she added the line, the colour changed automatically.)

The thing is, any written letters already have a colour, i.e. the colour of the font. The letters you're reading right now are black.

So are synesthetes blind to the colour of the font, or do they somehow see both at once? What if you change the colour of the font? Could you confuse a synesthetic child just learning to read by writing P in the colour in which they perceive R, or writing b in the colour in which they perceive d?

1 comment:

laura k said...

I keep hoping someone will answer this.