Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Synesthesia--seeing colors with numbers or letters

Just curious if anyone else's child has synesthesia:

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-synesthesia-brain-20120220,0,6760571.story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

DD first told me that she has this a couple of years ago. She sees colors with numbers, letters, and days of the week. Just like an adult friend of mine who has it, she was surprised to learn that other people do NOT experience this. It is supposedly linked to creativity (my DD is very artistic and creative). There seems to be some vague speculation that it may also be linked to autism or some other brain differences.

Coincidentally, I'm conducting some research on synaesthesia in my lab. A number of studies have found a link to artistic tendencies. The idea about a link to autism came from a single case-study. (Eyeball roll.) In my lab we are conducting a large-scale study on this, and finding no link between synaesthesia and autism spectrum.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions about synaesthesia you might have.

When I was little and younger elementary I linked those things with color. I'm not autistic, that I know of, fully functioning, but very creative and try to keep a cap on it. Though this forum, I don't know, you guys are bringing it back out in me.

I remember telling people about it and getting negative or "eye rolling" reactions. My mother barely tolerated my "weirdness". When I did talk every once in a whil, I came up with things like this!!! LOL

But I still remember that Sunday is black, Saturday is brown, Monday is blue, and Tuesday is definitely, definitely orange. The numbers and letters I remember thinking they were colors, and having favorites, but the memories aren't as distinct as the days of the weeks.

I also can hear a tone change when water runs from cold to hot. I did know someone else who could hear this, and he was a piano tuner : - )

I used to associate colors with numbers, and thought it was synaesthesia. And then I remembered those Fisher Price colored plastic numbers with the magnets my little sister used to play with on the fridge....

MegMeg, how funny! I guess I don't have any questions exactly, but I do find it really fascinating. DD is extremely matter of fact about the whole thing. She also associates an emotion with the numbers, which basically seems to match up with the emotions we generally associate with thsoe colors (red = mad, yellow = happy...well, and olive green = frustrated, apparently).

Oh, one question, I guess--not all her associations are the same as they were when she first told me about it at age 6. I wrote them down at the time and about half seem to have changed, though the rest are exactly the same. I thought this was not supposed to happen? But I do definitely believe her. She had no idea this was even a thing and just randomly mentioned it one day. ("Well, because one is always white, it's..." Me: "Wait. What?")

Oh, and has it been conclusively connected to intelligence and memory? DD is intelligent, obviously, and also has a prodigious memory. She used to effortlessly memorize very long books as a pre-reading toddler (her brother does the exact same thing). I mean REALLY long books, after maybe 3 or 4 readings. When she was in a play last summer, she knew all the lines in the whole thing.

This is kind of weird.

My son and I were doing this last night in the car on the way home from 4H.
Then we switched to name a flavor when the other says a color. You had to explain why. We figured we were just programed some where along the line.
We also concluded it probably changed over time.

That's extremely interesting! We've been speculating that there may be a much longer window of plasticity for this than everyone assumes. For one thing, it's often the written appearance of a letter or number that triggers the synaesthesia, so that's something that wouldn't happen (usually) until school age. I would love to do a study on whether we can induce new synaesthetic connections in adult synaesthetes.

As far as I know there is no evidence to support this.

I didn't think I thought of mumbers as colors, but they did have distinct personalities. And they had preferences for which number they wanted to be added with. I don't remember any of the specifics, but I am pretty sure their personalities were complex. I am not particularly creative--maybe this was a way to make math more interesting in the boring elementary grades rather than banging my head on the desk?

So cool! Definitely a form of synaesthesia. Some people report that numbers have genders as well.

I have synaesthesia for numbers and letters (which is one reason why I study it) and numbers have personalities for me too. 7 and 8, for example, are both female, but 8 is like a pushy extraverted older sister, while 7 is the interesting one you would actually want to have a conversation with.

The issue of losing synaesthesia as you get older is an interesting one. I have one memory of very vivid taste-color synaesthesia as a child, but I don't have anything like that as an adult.