Synaesthetic Perceptual Awareness
Synaesthesia is considered to be a frequent condition. Asking people about colored letters one might discover many synaesthetes. People who have synaesthesia tend to answer in a very similar way. Therefore one can easily get a first indication of a possible existence of synaesthesia. Almost all of the many synaesthetes I found in my family and my social circle were not aware of their synaesthesia or did not know that it is a phenomenon in itself. Maybe some of them do remember specific synaesthetic perceptions from their childhood, but did not perceive them any more as an adult. How it is possible to notice seeing colors when hearing music? It is all about awareness.
Different sources consider awareness to be having an influence on the perception of synaesthesia [1, 2]. Confusingly this term is used differently. Kadosh and Henik (2007) suggest in their review that synaesthesia could be a function of awareness, rather than an all-or-nothing function. Furthermore they delineate that "the greater the abnormal neuronal connections, the greater the activity in the area that relates to the synaesthetic experience, thus enabling it to enter conscious awareness".
Campen (2009) provides another view of awareness: he claims that a lot of synaesthetes are not aware of synaesthesia because they do not pay attention to it. He describes how becoming aware "takes a long time and a lot of concentration". He uses the term awareness as an attentional state, which can be increased by conscious effort. Dixon & Smilek (2008), mention, that Campen "goes too far" in proposing "that everyone is a synaesthete and that many people just do not know it yet"[3]. I do assume that there are a lot of synaesthetes who just don't know. But there are also non-synaesthetes who really do not have synaesthesia.
The use of the term awareness with respect to synaesthesia varies considerably: Is awareness only depending on neuronal connections or is it depending on what one is attentively focusing on? In a way it's both, therefore a more differentiated view is required.
I propose synaesthetic perceptual awareness as an umbrella term. It contains different aspects which may have an influence on the degree of how intensively synaesthesia is perceived:
(i) strength of neurological connectivity, (ii) attentional awareness, (iii) verbalization of synaesthetic perception, (iv) social interaction (v) information and (vi) identification with synaesthesia.
synaesthetic strength of neuronal connectivity: I believe that there is a threshold that needs to be exceeded for synaesthesia to become perceptive. It has been shown that the distinction of projectors and associators probably is based on levels of different strength of the neuronal connections [4, 5].
In a way, everybody perceives the world with coupled senses or, according to Ward (2008), with multisensory modalities. He predicates that senses do not work entirely separated from each other. It looks like in the brain of synaesthetes these multisensory modalities are connected with each other much stronger and therefore provide the opportunity of being perceived consciously[6]. I suggest that being a synaesthete or not may be depending on either the strengths of neurological structures that have passed the threshold or not. This threshold may be individually different and depending on the type of synaesthesia, too.
In contradiction to Kadosh et al. (2007) I claim that synaesthesia is an all-or-nothing function and graded as a level of neurological strength, which may develop in the neonatal phase of a human being. High neuronal strength per se does not lead automatically to synaesthetic awareness but is the determining condition for being a synaesthete or not.
synaesthetic attention:
Some synaesthetes do not note that their letters are colored. How is this possible? Lets make an experiment: in the following movie you have to count the passes of the white basket ball team.
Did you notice something? Did you see the moonwalking bear? Watch it again! Most people only notice their synaesthesia after they have been made aware of the fact that it could be there. Humang beings only have a limited attention capacity. We cannot perceive everything at the same time. This is very important. Otherwise we would be distracted all the time and therefore unable to reach a goal.
Recent research clearly points out that perceiving synaesthesia is a question of attention. Generally you do not perceive a stimulus that you do not pay attention to. Thus, due to our limited attention capacity the induction of synaesthetic colors precedes the conscious perception of the grapheme [7]. Music can elicit colored patterns, tastes and sensations of touch; due to our attentional limits a synaesthetes hearing music cannot pay attention to all facets of synaesthesia at the same time, s/he just can focus on some aspects of his perception.
Synaesthetes have the ability to focus and therefore to ‘zoom' into their synaesthetic perception. In a study underlining this, big letters consisting of little letters (e.g. A consisting of Bs, figure 2.) were presented to synaesthetes. They were asked which color they perceive. They explained that this depends on whether they were focusing either on the A or the Bs. So synaesthetic colors have an ambiguous character [8].
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| Abbildung XXX: Synaesthetes perceive the color of the A and the B. It is depending on what he is focussing. |
Ward (2008, p. 83) created a nice metaphor for the ambiguity of synaesthetic perception: it is as if you were looking through a window of a store; you may see what is inside the shop, but you also may see your image mirrored in the window glass.
In addition to that synaesthetes report that they cannot turn off the synaesthetic perception. The only way to do so is to ignore the main stimulus. Reading a book, a synaesthete won't perceive the music playing in the background; therefore he won't perceive the concurrent when not paying attention on the inducer. Synaesthetes do not perceive synaesthesia all the time due the limited attention capacity and because they do not always pay attention to it.
I suggest that synaesthetic attention is determined by what aspect of synaesthesia one is focusing on and in how often one pays attention to it in daily life. The latter may be very individual: some synaesthetes give a lot of regard to their synaesthesia during their life time whereas others hardly notice it.
synaesthetic verbalization: when I am speaking about synaesthetic verbalization I refer to the question whether a synaesthete ever has thought, spoken or written about synaesthetic perception. For example, thinking with inner speech ‘My number 3 is green' or telling to somebody ‘the sound of a piano is a blue dotted line' are ways to verbalize it. To draw synaesthetic perception is also a great way of verbalizing, painting it helps to better understand synaesthetic pictures.
I propose an analogy to make it easier to understand the difference between attention and verbalization: it is as if one was looking at a picture on the wall with a flowery garden. You can watch the picture without verbalizing it. This I assume to be the distinction between paying attention to synaesthesia (look at the picture) and verbalizing it (‘there are red flowers'). This verbalizing step offers the opportunity of transforming synaesthetic images into a more conscious state and I suggest that it is an important first step in reaching synaesthetic perceptual awareness.
A synaesthete who never actively thought about colored digits will be surprised by seeing colors when asked to think about graphemes. Casually I did meet M.S. in the street. At that time she never had given attention to color of digits nor had she ever verbalized it. Asking her for the color of A, she claimed directly that letters do not have colors. I told her to close her eyes and to imaging this grapheme. Astonishedly she reported that now it would be yellow...
We see in the first instance also that synaesthetes may think that digits do not have colors. With this example I want to show that for synaesthetes not a lot of attention is required to perceive synaesthesia and nor a big effort is needed to verbalize it. But it looks like that they sometimes require an external impulse to recognize that. It is like in the video clip with the moonwalking bear: people might watch this clip and count the ball contacts thousand times without ever seeing the bear.
In contradiction to this non-synaesthetes do not relate colors to perceptions like music or graphemes. When they are told to so, they make concrete associations, for example ‘Hearing music I see a flower with a bumble-bee' or the colors they choose for letters are not constant over time. Non-synaesthetes do not show an aversive response against incongruity, they like the letter ‘A' in every color.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to paint what synaesthetes perceive. But it is quite a great exercise making a picture of synaesthetic colors. This may help to develop an ‘eye' for better recognizing the details of it.
It might be that many synaesthetes only have verbalized some types of synaesthesia. I propose that being able to verbalize synaesthesia precedes a certain level of attentional awareness. On the other hand synaesthetic verbalization may lead to a higher level of attentional awareness.
synaesthetic information: there are a lot of synaesthetes who never heard about synaesthesia. Logically they cannot know that what they perceive is called synaesthesia, nor are they able to claim being synaesthetes. Many people feel relieved when they hear that this phenomenon has a name and is not an illness or a psychological disorder. Or it is just satisfying to have an answer for all the questions that may have arisen
It may also be easier to inform friends and family about a neurobiological issue that has a name than to report about a ‘foggy' world of colors that nobody might understand. Therefore one may be more open to talk about it. I claim that knowing synaesthesia helps to explore synaesthetic perception. ‘Wrong' information about it may have a contra-productive effect.
synaesthetic identification: identified synaesthetes claim to have synaesthesia. I estimate that only a tiny part of synaesthetes do so. This step from an unidentified to an identified state may be influenced by external factors. It does not come by itself.
I observed many synaesthetes who have inhibitions to identify with synaesthesia. For a long time the current opinion was that it is quite an uncommon phenomenon [9, 10]. The problem may be that popular press refers to old estimations about prevalence and ignores the current state of research. Often journalistic articles contain exaggerated description about synaesthetes and synaesthesia often is presented as ‘a scarce, especial firework of senses'. Thus, hearing about this ‘strange phenomenon called synaesthesia', many synaesthetes construct false ideas about synaesthetic perception, because what they perceive seems to be normal for them and they do not consider this to be special. Furthermore the aspect that synaesthetic awareness is often excluded, this means that one hardly reads in magazine articles that synaesthesia requires attention. Incomplete and unbalanced information may inhibit the step of identification and makes people believe that synaesthetes do fully perceive synaesthesia all the time. Furthermore, they may wrongly think that every synaesthete knows about his particularity. In reality, synaesthetic perception is very subtle, depends on attention and needs to be perceived in an aware state of mind.
synaesthetic social interactions: this may have a strong influence on how synaesthetes identify or deal - or do not - with synaesthesia.
Let's imagine a child that does not like number ‘6' because of its personality. Explaining this to its mother can trigger different reaction: the mother may say that the child should stop talking such nonsense. One can imagine that this child after, being ridiculed, may be inhibited to speak further about this or may develop an aversive behaviour against this kind of perception and therefore won't pay a lot of attention to it. A disinterested answer of the mother perhaps would not have a great influence on the sensory behaviour of the child. One can imagine that after this child thinks that it is quite normal and that everybody sees letters in colors. An interested answer with the request to tell more about this would be theoretically the best manner to react. This hypothetic situation may not only apply for children, it also may happen to adults talking with their friends.
As I am asking all my peers about colored digits, I noted that synaesthetes which I had informed before about synaesthesia have more difficulties to identify with their own synaesthesia than those who did not know what I am asking about. The first ones often make statements like ‘I do not have it like you do' or ‘you may perceive that much more intensively than I do'. This may be due to synaesthetic social interaction: they know that I am ‘the guy with synaesthesia' and therefore they think that they surely do not have the same condition. For me this reaction is quite habitual: although my ex-girlfriend S.A. confessed to see digits in colors, she denied being synaesthete for two years before she finally identified with it. And she was not the only one in my social circle who behaved in this way.
Generally it is not that easy to express synaesthetic experiences with words, this may be due to the complexity of synaesthesia and because of the lack of words for describing it. Nevertheless, I consider one of the best ways for synaesthetic verbalization is to discuss it with other people. Personally I claim that social exchange about synaesthesia may be a very satisfying way exploring this phenomenon. Therefore this may provide a new context for fascinating discussions with friends and family.
Every synaesthete has his own history in respect to the ‘coming-out'. It seems to be quite simple to pay attention to synaesthetic perception. But it is not easy to have a high level of perceptual attention all the time. It needs a lot of time and concentration to enhance the amount of synaesthetic perception.
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References
1. Campen Cv: The Hidden Sense: On Becoming Aware of Synesthesia. In: Revista Digital de Tecnologias Cognitivas. vol. 1; 2009.
2. Kadosh RC, Henik A: Can synaesthesia research inform cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2007, 11(4):177-184.
3. Smilek D, Dixon MJ: Two complementary perspectives on synaesthesia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2008, 12(10):364-366.
4. Rouw R, Scholte HS: Increased structural connectivity in grapheme-color synesthesia. Nature Neuroscience 2007, 10(6):792-797.
5. Hubbard EM: A real red-letter day. Nature Neuroscience 2007, 10(6):671-672.
6. Ward J: The Frog who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses: Routledge; 2008.
7. Sagiv N, Heer J, Robertson L: Does binding of synesthetic color to the evoking grapheme require attention? Cortex 2006, 42(2):232-242.
8. Rich AN, Mattingley JB: The effects of stimulus competition and voluntary attention on colour-graphemic synaesthesia. Neuroreport 2003, 14(14):1793-1798.
9. Cytowic RE: The man who tasted shapes. Massachusetts: The MIT Press; 2003.
10. Emrich HM, Zedler M, Schneider U: Welche Farbe hat der Montag? Synästhesie, Das Leben mit verknüpften Sinnen. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel; 2002.
