On Synesthesia

Now, I have heard of this word before - synesthesia.

And I'd heard about how it is the word for when letters have colors. Because letters obviously have colors ...right?

Ok, I ran this experiment freshman year of college where I'd have a bunch of colored pencils (I think they were actually watercolor pencils) and ask my friends to write out the alphabet and numbers 0-9 in whatever color seemed appropriate (because I wanted to see what colors their letters were), but they kept doing it wrong! My one friend just picked all the pretty pencil colors and would write out the entire alphabet with one pencil and then pick another pencil and do the same thing. I tried to explain what I meant, but they weren't having it.

But I ran it on myself too. I'd have done the long experiment on them too only it was obvious from the beginning that it wasn't going to work. But what I did (and what is apparently the standard test for synesthesia, though I didn't know it at the time) is write out my own alphabet in the right colors. And then do it again a couple of months later. And again a couple of months after that. I don't know if I still have those little papers, but they were almost identical every time. Even the letters where it was hard to figure out what pencil was the right color were almost exactly the same.

A is always red, B is always brown, C is a slate blue. D is a nice yellow-orange.

Not only that, but Wikipedia says that there is some overlap if you get enough of these people together - that there are trends for letters. That other people see red A's and white or black O's and yellow S's. That rocked my world this morning.

I also found this picture on Scholarpedia -->

I really like this kid's depiction of the difference between 0 (which is clear for me) and 1 (which is white).

And this other guy seems to have the same thing:

Steven was asking the other day whether it bothers me to see letters written in the wrong color, and I said no, but looking at this guy's alphabet and seeing the actual colors there, I do feel conflicted. There's just a wrongness to it. I don't mind looking at letters or numbers in black or even in colored pen as long as it's just one pen, but this does kind of bother me.

Reading up on Wikipedia, I guess my synesthesia isn't that strong. I don't actually SEE letters in colors. It's just like the color is hinted at. Although, looking at the word 'guess' there, I know that it's black, but it also kind of looks like green pink white yellow yellow. I would never tell you that it is that color, but I can feel the color there.

Can you not?