Have you ever heard of synesthesia? I never had until Mom recently sent me some information on it. Synesthesia is a condition in which a person's senses blend together. When one sense is stimulated, a different one responds. For instance, you may hear a color, or see a color when you hear a particular sound. Or you might smell a number or taste your food in colors. Do cucumbers taste pink to you? People with synesthesia usually think other people experience colors or sounds (or numbers/letters) the same way they do, and may be unaware that their gift is unusual. At least three of my girls assign particular colors to letters, numbers, and words, and Alie "sees" colors when she hears certain musical notes, especially chords. "Wednesday" might be yellow. The number 5 is always blue. "Emily" is green. This is very interesting to me, because this sure doesn't come from my side of the family! I'm not sure whether this is a synesthesia thing, but Alison also pictures the numbers 1 through ?? in a particular shape, along with the alphabet, the months of the year, etc.
See these kids' sites for more info (I do the easy kind of research):
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20080521/Feature3.asp
I am wondering how this knowledge might help my kids learn. ?? You know, there are auditory learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, and maybe even synesthetic learners. I'm sure there is not enough research on this topic yet.
Do you experience this phenomenon?? Try this.
Very interesting! The link at the bottom is not working. I plan on reading about this over the weekend.
ReplyDeleteLink's fixed. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI only "feel" the purple....
ReplyDeleteTina, I changed the test link to a better one. Try it. :)
ReplyDeleteHuh, nope, that's not me...although I do crave tacos when I hear John Mac Arthur preach, does that count? (30 years ago, I use to be able to hear him during my lunch hour on radio and I would often go to Taco Bell...I still crave tacos when I hear his voice, lol). Oh, and I crave French Toast when I think of Rex Humbard. hahaha. Come to think of it, I associate a lot of food with various things...do you? but not colors. Your girls are just special through and through.
ReplyDeleteVery neat. I saw a documentary about this a few years ago and thought it was very interesting. I can only imagine what it must be like. It sounds like it would be very fun, even if only for a couple minutes.
ReplyDeleteI know that when it comes to spelling, my daughter does better when I make the spelling list in pink/purple. She learns so much faster. Plus she visulizes those words in that particular colour while we are learning them.
ReplyDeletewow, this is very interesting!
ReplyDelete[...] Whew. We have had great success so far, other than math. Math will always be a bump in the road, unless a miracle happens. And miracles do happen, so I could be wrong about “always”. I watched the secondary math demo video at the Math-U-See website, and yes. Definitely. There is potential for a miracle to take place. But since we are not using MUS, it won’t be today. I found two more very good resources here and here. The circle of letters (A-L-G-E-B-R-A) up there makes me think of my synesthetic kids! [...]
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. When Julie gets sick she says she feels 'cloudy'...I still can't figure that one out either.
ReplyDelete