Comments on: Letters as Colors?

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:41:52 +0000

Erik, that was my first thought, actually. I wondered if he was associating colors from the letter refrigerator magnets. Studies have been done on this very idea, and the bottom line was “there are few if any reported cases involving culture-based, learned sets” of synesthesia… I did read that it runs strongly in families.

I just received a really interesting phone call from one of my sisters. She read this post and called me, a bit unnerved. She said she has this “number thing” that she’s never told anyone about – she just though she was totally weird her whole life. It’s not a color association, but more of a spatial-pattern thing she has with numbers, and also time. When she described it to me, it was a lot like Daniel Tammet’s experience with numbers – that’s the video of the guy with synesthesia linked to on Julie’s site, where I first read about this several days ago.

I told her to hush before she gets turned into a science experiment. :-) But really, this is all quite fascinating.

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 06:57:22 +0000

I wonder if early learning instills those colors or if it is something else? By early learning I mean that often the blocks or games we give children have a red apple for A, a yellow banana for B.

I am not sure why C would be blue, but perhaps the red apple explains the commonality of the red A? Perhaps other cultures experience a different association?

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:45:13 +0000

Julie, thanks, I watched the video you linked to. Incredibly interesting to me. Our brains are so amazingly complex, such a testimony to our Creator God who is infinitely creative and wise. :-) Give me the latest details if you find out more about this. This is just one more aspect of my son that helps me understand him better, and as his primary teacher, these sort of idiosyncrasies (?) reveal things about how he learns and connects with the world.

Jane, rather than saying this discovery was due to a very bizarre coincidence, I should have said due to the providence of God. I’d never heard of synesthesia before either, and I would have thought this was merely an odd isolated incident, since my son is already quite quirky! It’s nice to know there’s information out there about this.

By: Jane

Jane — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:34:53 +0000

That is very interesting! I hadn’t heard of that before. Isn’t that cool that you were made aware of it just befor your son’s comment!

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:29:24 +0000

Isn’t the human brain extraordinary? My post today linke to a YouTube video about Daniel Tammet. I linked to part 2 because it is in part 2 of the video that he explains how he experiences numbers with colors and shapes.

You “test” reminds me of the two psychologist who tested Daniel in either part 4 or part 5. They gave him clay and had him mold his numbers one day. The next day, he was asked to do the same thing. Well, he used the same colors and molded almost identical shapes… it was very interesting!