Synaesthesia
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Original post by ihaterealitytvshows
hey everyone! im doing some work on the subject of synaesthesia the the type where you associate colours with other things (sounds, numbers, letters etc.) it would be really helpful if you could answer some q's rep up for grabs:
-do you feel this has advantaged you in anyway in everyday life?
-is it something that has always been present in you or did something trigger it?
- with the colours, is it a feeling that a colour is connected to an object or is that how you actually see it (e.g if a word was written in black would you see it as being a different colour?)
thanks very much to answer just quote me
-do you feel this has advantaged you in anyway in everyday life?
-is it something that has always been present in you or did something trigger it?
- with the colours, is it a feeling that a colour is connected to an object or is that how you actually see it (e.g if a word was written in black would you see it as being a different colour?)
thanks very much to answer just quote me
-do you feel this has advantaged you in anyway in everyday life?
I don't think it did consciously for a long, long time. But when I started revising for my AS exams, I started using it to my advantage - I revise best using mind maps, and I found that if I wrote in the colours that particular topics or words most instantly associated themselves with, in my head, I remembered things a lot better. (What also helped was the fact that I have a very visual memory - so I could 'see' the colours on the page, too.)
-is it something that has always been present in you or did something trigger it?
Ummm, I'm really not sure. I can't remember ever not having it, so I guess if there was a particular trigger, I must've been too young to remember it now.
- with the colours, is it a feeling that a colour is connected to an object or is that how you actually see it (e.g if a word was written in black would you see it as being a different colour?)
If I'm reading a book, I don't normally see colours, probably because it's so rapid. But most of the time it's the words/letters themselves that are colourful, for no particular reason. I think my brain gets confused with words FOR colours, or for things like fruit that have an associated colour - in that case the associated colour overrides whatever the synaesthesia might do.
If I think about a single word, though, I normally see it in my head as a black word, but with colour kind of painted over it.
Original post by goape
I like synesthesia
I like the fact that you listen to Porcupine Tree.
I experience this and so does my mum. I actually thought everyone did until I asked a few people I knew who looked at me as though I was crazy haha. I have colours for numbers, letters, words, names and I see colours and textures when I listen to music which is why I find music so enjoyable.
I find that synaesthesia definitely gave me a slight advantage in terms of an inbuilt memory device and mental calculator. The true potential of synaesthesia can be seen from the prodigious feats of Daniel Tammet.
I definitely picture time on a visual scale in my mind, with the calendar year appearing as a kind of circular carousel, rotating through the months. On a separate, weekly, scale the weeks connect to each other to form a long, straight ticker-tape which I can just shuffle through.
On a long term scale of years, decades and centuries, the time scale is more of a winding path with various events placed along it. Each century is proportional in length to how well versed I am to the events it holds, so some centuries like 3-8th are really short and others like 19-20th are really long and windy.
When it comes to numbers and letters though, I don't associate them with colours or textures, but rather attribute a distinct personality to each number. I'm not sure if that qualifies as synaesthesia but pretty much every number up to 1000 has a distinct personality and after that it gets a bit hazy, with the numbers taking on a mix of characteristics from their components. The single digit numbers have the more vivid and complex personalities of course, with 5 being humble, trustworthy and simple-minded, 6 is sly abnd yet beautiful, 8 is plain and jealous of 6, 9 is tall, silent, shy and in love with 8, etc... It even works in reverse sometimes, to the extent that I associate people with a particular number.
As for music, I only really associate my most favourite songs with colours, and that's mainly dictated by the predominant hues featured in the corresponding music videos, so my synaesthesia is definitely lacking n that area.
I definitely picture time on a visual scale in my mind, with the calendar year appearing as a kind of circular carousel, rotating through the months. On a separate, weekly, scale the weeks connect to each other to form a long, straight ticker-tape which I can just shuffle through.
On a long term scale of years, decades and centuries, the time scale is more of a winding path with various events placed along it. Each century is proportional in length to how well versed I am to the events it holds, so some centuries like 3-8th are really short and others like 19-20th are really long and windy.
When it comes to numbers and letters though, I don't associate them with colours or textures, but rather attribute a distinct personality to each number. I'm not sure if that qualifies as synaesthesia but pretty much every number up to 1000 has a distinct personality and after that it gets a bit hazy, with the numbers taking on a mix of characteristics from their components. The single digit numbers have the more vivid and complex personalities of course, with 5 being humble, trustworthy and simple-minded, 6 is sly abnd yet beautiful, 8 is plain and jealous of 6, 9 is tall, silent, shy and in love with 8, etc... It even works in reverse sometimes, to the extent that I associate people with a particular number.
As for music, I only really associate my most favourite songs with colours, and that's mainly dictated by the predominant hues featured in the corresponding music videos, so my synaesthesia is definitely lacking n that area.
Original post by darkestskies
I just looked it up, and I have it too, though I didn't realise it was another kind of synaethesia!
Basically it's when, if you think about the days of the week, or different years, or the past/future, they are visualised in sort of map-like way. You could point to the space that Tuesday occupies, or describe the direction that the passage of time follows. For example - when I think about time, I'm standing on 2012, looking permanently into the past of a long timeline that slants downwards to my left.
I do this too! I often confuse words beginning with or containing a prominent F, W or T because they're all green letters. Those are my worst ones, although A and E are both yellow and that can be a bit annoying too.
Basically it's when, if you think about the days of the week, or different years, or the past/future, they are visualised in sort of map-like way. You could point to the space that Tuesday occupies, or describe the direction that the passage of time follows. For example - when I think about time, I'm standing on 2012, looking permanently into the past of a long timeline that slants downwards to my left.
I do this too! I often confuse words beginning with or containing a prominent F, W or T because they're all green letters. Those are my worst ones, although A and E are both yellow and that can be a bit annoying too.
Haha I just realized I have it...for me the year and seasons are all like a globe and each month and season occupies a specific spot like winter is in the upper right side and so on...just thought it's some weird thing in my mind
and that thing with words I can't remember and say it begins with a D and it begins with an C but has a D in it. ) It's weird but it's cool at the same time 
Original post by Amwazicles
I like the fact that you listen to Porcupine Tree.
Yeah, they're quite popular on this site seemingly, which is good.
Original post by goape
Yeah, they're quite popular on this site seemingly, which is good.
Original post by Oldboy5745
I find that synaesthesia definitely gave me a slight advantage in terms of an inbuilt memory device and mental calculator. The true potential of synaesthesia can be seen from the prodigious feats of Daniel Tammet.
When it comes to numbers and letters though, I don't associate them with colours or textures, but rather attribute a distinct personality to each number. I'm not sure if that qualifies as synaesthesia but pretty much every number up to 1000 has a distinct personality and after that it gets a bit hazy, with the numbers taking on a mix of characteristics from their components. The single digit numbers have the more vivid and complex personalities of course, with 5 being humble, trustworthy and simple-minded, 6 is sly abnd yet beautiful, 8 is plain and jealous of 6, 9 is tall, silent, shy and in love with 8, etc... It even works in reverse sometimes, to the extent that I associate people with a particular number.
When it comes to numbers and letters though, I don't associate them with colours or textures, but rather attribute a distinct personality to each number. I'm not sure if that qualifies as synaesthesia but pretty much every number up to 1000 has a distinct personality and after that it gets a bit hazy, with the numbers taking on a mix of characteristics from their components. The single digit numbers have the more vivid and complex personalities of course, with 5 being humble, trustworthy and simple-minded, 6 is sly abnd yet beautiful, 8 is plain and jealous of 6, 9 is tall, silent, shy and in love with 8, etc... It even works in reverse sometimes, to the extent that I associate people with a particular number.
The true inbuilt potential of human memory can be seen in any mentathlete. Never mind synaesthesia. Tammet's feats are nothing special in the world of memory, see the following:
Whether or not Tammet is a true synaesthete is up for debate, he may have it. Or he may be lying, but Josh Foer writes of 3 separate meetings he had with Tammet where he asked him to describe the same number each time, and each of Tammet's answers were different.
I believe that Daniel Tammet is nothing but a liar and a fraud. In the world of mnemonics, Tammet's achievements are not spectacular and are actually incredibly mediocre for a trained mnemonists - probably one of the reasons he denies it.
The following quotes come from Daniel Tammet's website (in 2001), which he has now deleted a long time ago. But shards of it still remain. The following quotes come from here.
My own interest in memory and conversely Memory sport was sparked by my casual acquaintance with a children’s book on broad memory concepts for better exam performance at the age of 15. The following year I passed my GCSEs with some of the year’s best results and subsequently performed well at A-level, mastering French and German along the way with the help of these tried-and-tested techniques.
Tammet denies ever having any mnemonic training, he claims his gifts are entirely natural and began when he had seizures as a child. He also achieved B's in his A-Levels in French and German, pretty rubbish for someone with a supposed 'natural memory' so powerful he can master Icelandic in a week, dontcha think?
Despite his defiance that he never studied mnemonics, despite him showing a clear interest in memory sport and technique. He competed in the World Memory Championship in 1999, placing 12th, and then again in 2000, placing 4th.
Thereafter, my obsession with the sport grew, and following months of strenuous training and hard work I climbed into the World’s Top-5 rated Memory sportsmen. My performance at the 2000 World Memory Championships earned me a discipline gold medal and two more event medals, the highlight of one performance being where I bested the World Champion’s time by a fraction of a second, with the successful memorisation and subsequent perfect recall of an entire shuffled deck of cards in a time of 1 minute 11.69 seconds. In another round, I achieved a new personal best memorising 1,460 digits backwards and forwards in 1 hour, one of the largest amounts of digits ever memorised within that time frame in the Championship’s history.
Further contradiction to the idea of Tammet being a prodigious savant right there.
Not only that, but on his website it says he taught English in Scandinavia for a while. Some definitions of Scandinavia include Iceland with our Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish brethren. Some don't. So it's possible that he learned Icelandic during his year there, and the story of "Genius Boy Learns Icelandic in a Week!" is bull****. On top of which, he was able to answer some questions of a host. Not exactly a test of conversationalism, let alone fluency.
His other skills of "quick mental calculation" and "being able to recall what day it was on ANY calendar date" are also achievable through training. On the BBC documentary that made Tammet famous, he multiples 2 three-digit numbers together with ease. He describes what he sees when multiplying numbers as the 2 images those numbers represent fuse together to create the answer, but if you watch, you can see him doodling on the table in the same fashion that a mental athlete would do when performing mental calculations using carefully worked out algorithms. You can see a "mathemagician" perform much more complex calculations than Tammet here (includes the calendar date trick). You can do a bit of googling on the subject, the kind of calculations done is something anyone can learn to do.
Recalling what day it is on a calendar date just requires the following of algorithms, another skill anyone can learn. Especially someone who's been interested in memory sports for 12 years before the documentary was made.
Take the headline in the German magazine der Spiegel saying "British Savant Learns German in a Week". It describes Tammet having learned German in only a week, although having done basic German at school (so much for mastering the language, huh?). But not only that, he's been running an e-learning course, Optimnem, which teaches French and Spanish, which has been running for more than 10 years now! Long before appearances of 'mastering languages' in mere weeks. Here is Tammet advertising his e-learning service back in 2001. I want to draw your attention to this:
People always ask me if I was born with this ability. The short answer is no. I struggled at school the same as everybody else. Over the years I’ve studied a lot and the things that I have learned have literally transformed my way of thinking and increased my mental capabilities dramatically.
He struggled at school, despite having 'mastered' 2 the language of 2/3 of his A Levels? Not only that, I have to reiterate. He claims his memory is natural. But look at that quote, quite clearly saying he has trained his memory.
Now, there have been numerous studies done on Tammet. Back in 2001 he participated in a study of mnemonists to see what's happening in their brain when they memorise things.
Daniel has also agreed to have his brainwaves examined by scientists at the Institute of Neurology in London.
Daniel was found to use his brain the exact same way as the other mnemonists who took part in the study.
About his savantism being diagnosed, taken from his Wikipedia page:
In another study, Simon Baron-Cohen and others at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge tested Tammet's abilities in around 2005.[24] He was found to have synaesthesia according to the "Test of Genuineness-Revised" which tests the subjects' consistency in reporting descriptions of their synaesthesia. He performed well on tests of short term memory (with a digit span of 11.5, where 6.5 is typical). Conversely, test results showed his memory for faces appeared to be impaired, and he scored at the level expected of a 6-8 year old child in this task. The authors speculated that Tammet's savant memory could be a result of synaesthesia combined with Asperger syndrome, while noting that mnemonic strategies (such as the method of loci) could also explain savant memory abilities.
It wouldn't be hard for Tammet to lie to psychologists, what particularly draws my attention are two things. "mnemonic strategies could also explain savant memory abilities" and of course "Conversely, test results showed his memory for faces appeared to be impaired, and he scored at the level expected of a 6-8 year old child"
Hmm, he struggles to remember faces? Why then is it that he came 1st place in the competition for memorising names-and-faces in the World Memory Championship (I'm not sure if he accomplished this in 1999 or 2000, I think it was 2000), even beating the 8-time world champion, Dominic O'Brien?
Another quote from a 2005 article in The Sun promoting his 2006 documentary:
Daniel speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, and Esperanto and he remembers the face of every person he has EVER met.
From Joshua Foer's 2011 book, Moonwalking with Einstein, pg. 230:
When Baron-Cohen tested Daniel’s memory for faces, he performed abysmally, leading Baron-Cohen to conclude that “his face memory appears impaired.” That sounds like just the sort of thing a savant might be bad at. And yet when Daniel Corney [Daniel's birth name] competed in the World Memory Championship, he won the gold medal in the names-and-faces event. It just didn’t make sense.
See his event-winning score here. 108.5 names to a face memorised in 15 minutes.
pg. 10 of Baron-Cohen's paper in Science:
Thus, his short-term memory appears normal, his face memory appears impaired, whilst his number memory is superior.
One from Tammet in a TV interview in 2007:
There are many things that I can't do that most people can.... When I look at someone who's hosting a party and they can talk to 100 people and they can remember all their faces, they can do eye contact and communicate flawlessly and fluently I think of them as a genius.
At one time he's saying he can remember everyone's faces, even winning a competition for being the best in the world at it, next he thinks normal people are geniuses 'cause they can remember faces and he can't?
Final point is his memorisation of pi from his 'synaesthesia and savant abilities' and the way the numbers 'intuitively come to him'. He is said to know pi to over 22,000 digits. In the 2006 documentary, it even shows him reciting them at an official reading.
However a quick check of the world records shows that he started making mistakes after the 2964th digit, landing him 36th. You might say that is still impressive, but it is something is easily achievable with mnemonic techniques. You have to understand that that competitors at the World Memory Championships can memorise thousands of random digits in only 1 hour, and they all learned to do it through training. If they can learn that many digits in an hour, beating Daniel's record of 2964 with as much time as they like to prepare would be an easy feat. A quick check of the current world records shows that Wang Feng was able to memorise 2660 random digits in 1 hour at the 2011 World Memory Championship.
2660 digits memorised; one hour. Daniel Tammet's claim to fame? 2964 digits memorised; an entire lifetime to memorise them.
Anyone can learn to do better than what Tammet ever has. He has done nothing but make bucketloads of money from lying to people with all his 'natural genius' hype.
Mythbusting like a pro.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by Hype en Ecosse
*Snip*
A bit of an overreaction to a one-line reference but it's a valid point. I agree that Tammet may be taking advantage of the media to exaggerate the extent of his abilities but nevertheless you also can't say that he is ordinary. The fact that he gives varying descriptions of how he perceives numbers is hardly surprising seeing as what synaesthetes experience can be difficult to put into words and describe accurately/consistently. I wouldn't go as far as to call him a liar and a fraud, especially since synaesthesia isn't as rare as, say eidetic memory, which has not been proven to exist at all really and all those who claim to have it are more than likely to be delusional.
For the most part I agree that his abilities have been enhanced through training and biased representation in articles, documentaries and his book. Yet you cannot argue that some people are born with prodiguous abilities. I would love to hear your thoughts on the likes of Rudiger Gamm for example. Other savants who are indisputably prodigious in my opinion include Stephen Wiltshire and Kim Peek, whose abilities simply cannot be artificially invoked through mnemonics and other cognitive training. To avoid straying off topic you can PM me if you would like to continue the discussion, I always found savants fascinating, although I must say that I didn't mean to put Tammet on a pedestal and dropped his name slightly out of context despite being aware of certain inconsistencies in his story.
Original post by StBebe
Hello people,
I have synaesthesia. That is, I see sounds. The Coldplay song Hurts Like Heaven is bright yellow for example, well not all of it but large parts of it. Usually only parts of songs are of the same colour, three or four bars or a short section, not the whole song. Sometimes it's just one instrument that's brightly coloured, the rest might be grey or light blue. It's something to do with mymigrane headaches cause it's the strongest just before and during a migrane. It's not a type of insanity if you're thinking that, it's actually pretty cool. Anyone else have it?
I have synaesthesia. That is, I see sounds. The Coldplay song Hurts Like Heaven is bright yellow for example, well not all of it but large parts of it. Usually only parts of songs are of the same colour, three or four bars or a short section, not the whole song. Sometimes it's just one instrument that's brightly coloured, the rest might be grey or light blue. It's something to do with mymigrane headaches cause it's the strongest just before and during a migrane. It's not a type of insanity if you're thinking that, it's actually pretty cool. Anyone else have it?
That is such a beautiful song, it makes me feel really strange but happy, something I can't really describe. I don't think I have synaesthesia but it's something I've considered before, as I think I can often "taste"/"feel"/associate a colour with a word or phrase, but very faintly. I also see spoken words and phrases flash up spelt out in my head when people talk to me, but I don't think that's relevant to this
Original post by StBebe
Hello people,
I have synaesthesia. That is, I see sounds. The Coldplay song Hurts Like Heaven is bright yellow for example, well not all of it but large parts of it. Usually only parts of songs are of the same colour, three or four bars or a short section, not the whole song. Sometimes it's just one instrument that's brightly coloured, the rest might be grey or light blue. It's something to do with mymigrane headaches cause it's the strongest just before and during a migrane. It's not a type of insanity if you're thinking that, it's actually pretty cool. Anyone else have it?
I have synaesthesia. That is, I see sounds. The Coldplay song Hurts Like Heaven is bright yellow for example, well not all of it but large parts of it. Usually only parts of songs are of the same colour, three or four bars or a short section, not the whole song. Sometimes it's just one instrument that's brightly coloured, the rest might be grey or light blue. It's something to do with mymigrane headaches cause it's the strongest just before and during a migrane. It's not a type of insanity if you're thinking that, it's actually pretty cool. Anyone else have it?
I was asked to do a study about this for people who don't and do have it but see if the colours for instruments match up.
I don't have it particularly but I know people who do and also people who have it for numbers.
Original post by Oldboy5745
A bit of an overreaction to a one-line reference but it's a valid point.
It wasn't directed at you, more at the man himself.
