useless or useful?

I think that most synaesthetes would see what they have as a good thing, and I’d agree. Up until now though I’d thought it was pretty useless, because although I see things differently to a lot of people, it doesn’t really help or aid me in any way.

Studies have found that in general, synaesthetes have good memories because they are able to use the colour perception to jog their memory. As I have mentioned before, the colours usually either confuse me or I just remember the colour of the word and not the word itself.

In fact, quite often when I am speaking, I can’t get my words out, I can’t seem to locate the word I’m looking for even if it’s a fairly common word. I think it’s partly down to the fact that the colours and sensory information in the outside world are interfering and distracting me from what’s going on in my head.

I’ve always been good at spelling though and that could possible be due to synaesthesia. Have I just got a good eye for spotting mistakes, or have I always been seeing the colours as well, and noticing when the colours look wrong? I’m not sure really. It’s hard to say when I don’t actually see the colours, I just kind of know they’re there in my mind’s eye.

But ever since I realised I had something different to a lot of people, I’ve started to notice it more and more. This makes me think that maybe I can try and use it to improve my memory. If I’m noticing the colours more then surely I can focus more on them when it comes to remembering things? I wish that was the case but I’m dubious.

a quick thought on dyslexia

While copying some text and numbers from a printed page into a Word document (and getting a few of the words and numbers mixed up along the way), it made me think about dyslexia in relation to synesthesia.

I don’t have dyslexia myself (I think my brain was just refusing to work today) but I wonder if there are any synaesthetes – I’m talking about grapheme-colour synaesthetes mainly – who are also dyslexic. There must be some out there, and if so, how do they experience colours in response to letters and words? Is there a difference compared to how a non-dyslexic synaesthesia would see them?

According to Dyslexia Action, Dyslexic people usually find it difficult to analyse and work with the sounds of spoken words, and many have difficulties with short-term memory, sequencing and organisation. This means that it is more difficult for them to learn how spoken sounds map onto letters, which affects the ability to spell and the ability to decode or ‘sound out’ words.

If synaesthesia is combined with dyslexia, does it make it even harder to process language? Do the colours conflict with the letters in the words? Or alternatively, can the synaesthesia help with spelling?

These are questions I’ll never find the answers to unless I can find a dyslexic synaesthete, but I thought I’d write down my thoughts on it anyway.