Reply To: Synaesthesia

[blackdog]

I don’t think it can truly be learned. We all learn to associate various colours/smells/shapes with different things throughout our lives. But it’s not the same.

I remember one time at the Science Centre in Toronto they had little vending machines with candies in them. One had green candies and one had orange or something like that. But they didn’t taste like orange or lime, like you would expect. I think one was grape and one was cherry. The point of it was to demonstrate how we learn to associate certain colours with certain flavours.

So in the experiment with the letters, the subjects learned to associate the colour with the letter. Like how we all associate the colour orange with the flavour orange. But associating the colour red with the letter S is not the same as seeing the letter S as the colour red.

I had those fridge magnets too. They were one of my favourite toys. But I don’t see letters as colours. I couldn’t even tell you what colour went with which letter.

I do sort of “feel” that certain colours go with certain things sometimes. And it can upset me a little  when a colour is not right. I don’t know what you would call that, but it’s not Synaesthesia.

I see countries like part of a map with labels. But I think that’s just because what they look like on a map is all I know about them. If I know what a place looks like, even a little, I picture it that way. Like when someone says “Kenya”, I see Mount Kilimanjaro. Even though it’s actually  in Tanzania. My maps aren’t very accurate either. I should draw one sometime with the countries where I see them, just for a laugh. I’m always learning something is not where I thought it was. But my brain seems to automatically go back to my version of the world afterwards.

And I’m starting to babble now. Probably should have gone to bed like I was going to….

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