THE FROG WHO CROAKED BLUE;

ALIENS IN THE FAMILY

Greg Ellard,Jessicka Doheny,Rachel Cuttle, andSorcha Doyle.

Synaesthesia “A condition in which a sensory experience

normally associated with one modality occurs when another modality is stimulated. To a certain extent such cross-modality experiences are perfectly normal; e.g. low-pitched tones give a sensation of softness or fullness while high-pitched tones feel brittle and sharp, the colour blue feels cold while red feels warm.”

“However, the term is usually restricted to the unusual cases in which regular and vivid cross-modality experiences occur.”

In other words. . . . .

Synaesthesia is where peoples senses can get a bit mixed up. It is like an extra sense.

There are at least sixty- one types of synaesthesia; two–sensory and multiple-sensory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIEiOrxhtNQ

Two-Sensory Synaesthesia This is where two senses cross. It can

be undirectional e.g. a word produces a colour, or bi-directional e.g. a word can produce both a colour and a sound. Such as where: A smell produces the perception of a colour

-> Coloured-Olfaction A taste produces the perception of colour -

> Coloured-Gustation A sound produces the perception of colour -

> Coloured-Hearing or Chromaesthesia

Multiple-Sensory Synaesthesia

The experience of numbers that have their own colours -> Coloured-Numbers

The experience of letters as colours -> Coloured-Letters

The experience of colours when the individual hears words -> Coloured-Graphemes

The experience of numbers as shapes -> Shaped-Numbers

Coloured-Letters/Numbers

Aliens in the Family

Written by Jamie Ward, and published 2008.

“People with synaesthesia experience the ordinary world in extraordinary ways.”

Most synaesthetes don’t realise their condition, just as in the case of Debbie she did not discover she had synaesthesia until her mid-twenties.

Sometimes synaesthesia rules a persons life without them ever realising it; they will often name their children to fit their synaesthesia and choose their partners on this basis.

“The fact that synaesthesia runs in families doesn’t automatically make it genetic.” Although, there is scientific evidence of a genetic link to synaesthesia.

Even though synaesthesia runs in families it doesn’t mean all family members have the same form.

In the case of the identical twins Mary and Jacqueline, they had similar types of synaesthesia but saw different colours. E.g. Mary sees “a” as green and

Jacqueline sees it as red. Yet again they didn’t realise they had

synaesthesia until they were in their early twenties.

Today’s Lecture

The most common forms of synaesthesia, and the ones we will be looking at are: Grapheme -> colour synaesthesia ->

multiple-sensory Chromaesthesia -> coloured hearing ->

two-sensory Coloured Gustation -> Taste as a colour

-> two-sensory

Grapheme

This is where the individual experiences colour when they hear words.

Chromaesthesia

This is where an non visual stimuli evokes the perception of a colour.

Such as seeing colour as you hear music.

Coloured Gustation

When some synesthetes eat, the food evokes the perception of colour.

This is one of the tests for synaesthesia we came across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o39TiACe4mw

Any Questions?

References

Ward, J. (2008). The Frog Who Croaked Blue (pp. 1 – 12). East Sussex: Routledge

Reber, A.S., & Reber E.S. (2001). The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (p 732). London: Penguin Books.

Retrieved October 11, 2009, from: http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/html/types/htm

Booth, S., Texas, S., & Licata, D. Synaesthesia.Retrieved October 10, 2009, from: http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/synesthesia/types.html