Synesthesia is a disorder where one of the senses such as sight is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional sense such as hearing. It is a condition that deals with the unification of the senses. One other form of synesthesia is one is one where objects such as letters, numbers, shapes or the names of people with a sensory perceptions such as color, flavor and smell. The word synesthesia is derived from two Greek words which are syn and aesthesis which means together and perception respectively. A person suffering from synesthesia is referred to as synesthete.
Synesthesia is a rare and wonderful condition. It affects how individuals view life and how general affects their day-to-day activities. This because they may experience excessive sensory input and have lengthier time processing the information as a result of having to process additional sensations. It is an emotional concept that is not widely known and as such people suffering from it are easily misunderstood and misjudged. Many of them feel isolated and alone until they come across someone who is like them. They are perceived as liars, over-dramatic and crazy when they share their organic and honest opinions. Even amongst themselves, individuals with synesthesia often disagree on their diverse perceptions. This condition also affects all the areas of their lives. The purpose of this study is to identify how synesthesia affects learning. The condition itself will also be discussed and analyzed.
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Synesthesia is a condition that is dated back to 1812. However, many did not know about it and even today researchers are still collecting data on it. Types of synesthesia include grapheme-color synesthesia and time space synesthesia. Today, evidence exists to show that people suffering from synesthesia differ in their brain matter from those who do not have it. They have an increased volume in their grey matter in particular parts of their brains. The ability to diagnose an individual with synesthesia is challenging and researchers have to look for consistent results of two or even more occasions. The assessment is termed as valid when the subject has a consistent description in two or more instances and when there is no prior caution in being retested.
The first characteristics that is common in the development of synesthesia is that it begins at the age of four in childhood. It has authentic experiences that are involuntary, automatic, unlearned and vivid. It is a dysfunction that is neurological in nature. It is different from hallucinations, psychotic phenomenon, delusion or imagery. It is also not induced by drugs. The synesthesia acquire after abuse of drugs in pseudo-synthesis. Developmental synesthesia is induced by a neurological factor while pseudo-synesthesia is induced by psychomimetic use of drugs. It development can also be coupled up with autism, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.
This condition is a lifelong experience that remains to be consistent One of the features of this condition is that it can be passed down from one generation to another. It is dominant in females in the United States of American and in the United Kingdom. Synesthetes are majorly artists, poets, composers and writers. The characteristics of these individuals include the ability to recall information to details. They always feel the need to be very organized in what they do.
Synesthesia is an experience that is passive, insuppressible and involuntary. This is because different synesthetes can have the same type of synesthesia but have different experiences. It is generic and durable as well. Durable is defined as its nature to be consistent over a period of time and tested over and over. Generic gives reference to its experiences and tastes which are not elaborate or pictorial. It often depicted as spirals, lines and blobs of color. Its textures may be rough or smooth and temperatures may be cool, hot or cold. It is emotional that is accompanied by a conviction and a certitude. It is also seen as memorable. The secondary perception is always remembered better compared to the primary perception. It is also projected because one can be asked to imagine a color rather than seeing it and pointing it out.
The five common types of synesthesia are number forms, tasted words, colored hearing, colored letters and personification of numbers and letters. The most common is number forms which may be curved, straight, angled or bent followed by colored letters which is also referred to as graphemes. Colored letters are significant in the development of the brain in a child. Colors are useful in the recalling of the names of people and telephone numbers. Those who are able to taste words have the ability to taste spoken and written words. Colored hearing is majorly triggered by voices, music and everyday sounds. Personification of numbers is when letter or numbers may have color, gender or personalities (Wheeler, 2013).
Synesthetes are characterized into the mentioned groups however, the type that has been widely studied is the graphemes. Individuals often explain their hearing, reading or even numbers leads them to a specific color. This however can differ depending on form, arrangement, solidity, nuance, intensity and transparency. Some of these individuals see the colors on the outside while some see them on the inside of people and objects.
Synesthesia and learning are extremely interconnected and the development of this condition is noticeably influenced by the learning process. Triggers are referred to as synesthetic inducers which are the stimuli that trigger the unusual encounters during learning. These triggers often involve the perceptions of the complex priorities that are learned at an early stage in life. During this time, children are involved in explicit learning of skills and takes place in a setting that is formal. In these settings, they are able to discriminate, recognize, use and name the elements of structures that are highly categorized. The learning process is slows and continues even to the teenage years and beyond. In this process, the synesthesia experiences begin to change.
One of the ways that synesthesia affects learning is that it gives room for several senses to be activated when learning. The learning theory suggests that the learning process can be supported by using various modalities and synesthesia provides a chance for students to experience this. They see beyond the face value of what they are learning. They perceive genders, colors and personalities as extra information about what they are learning. They will derive other facts about a subject matter. Adding information to the topic being learnt is an aid in the process of learning and synesthetic perception does that to the students.
Synesthetes are able to experience images that are more vivid and visual compared to non-synesthetes. The images rise automatically and become consistent over a period of time. The formation of visual images in the mind of the student is a powerful methods by which information is stored. This condition has beneficial opportunities where it acts as a mental assistance in the learning process. An illustration of this the addition or subtraction of two numbers such as 6 and 3. In addition, a synesthete will visualize cubes stack up together and have that image in the head. This also applies in subtraction. This enables the students to remember the calculations easily.
A research done by Meier and Rothen (2013) reveals that there is a consistent proof that there is a memory advantage in persons who suffer from synesthesia and in particular grapheme-color synesthesia. This is found in particular events where the students recalls lists of digits or words. The materials such as digits and words that trigger the synesthetic experience support the theory that the memory advantage is linked to the inducers directly. This boosts the ability of students to recall the things they learn in school. This is beneficial to the students because they are able to do well in their examinations since they are in a position to recall digits and images easily. It gives them an edge over the students who do not suffer from synesthesia. How intense the memory advantage is dependent on the type of synesthesia.
In their research, Bankieris and Aslin (2016) concluded that individuals suffering from synesthesia have a greater capability to learn and keep in mind shape-color links. In their study there were also able to observe that the long term memory of synesthetes was stronger compared to the long term memory of non-synesthetes. Synesthetes are able to remember more compared to their counterparts. This is important in learning because they memory is sharper and easily remembers what has been learnt in schools. They are able to remember what they leant in their first year of school four years down the line. This is important because most of them are able to be important and vital assets to their employers. It is not only beneficial to students in school but also in the job market.
When it comes to matching colors, synesthetes have an upper hand over the non-synesthetes. This is especially important to students who are interested in art and design. They are able to come up with patterns that are appealing to the eye more than their counterparts. They are able to produce better products based on hue, brightness and saturation since they view colors from a different perspective compared to non-synesthetes. This results in better designers in fashion and interior design. Colors express emotions and as such their understanding is important and how to balance them is key. Synesthetes have heightened abilities to learn explicitly and maintain the shape and color associations.
Synesthesia permits leaning that is non-declarative especially classical conditioning. This means that synesthesia does not only support explicit memory. In a test where the participants were asked to passively view slides in which some were white in color with graphemes and some were of pure patches of color. In the test slides that had only one color were displayed simultaneously with an astonishing sound. Those suffering from synesthesia started to show responses that were heightened on their skin. This was however not the case for multicolored slides. Concurrents were also experienced but not on the graphemes. The conditioned responses to the colors and their transference to graphemes indicated a form of non-declarative learning that was unusual. The associations due to synesthesia could be the basis of learning implicitly about the regularities of the environment (Watson et al., 2014).
Synesthetes helps children understand music more. When the children are taught explicitly about the melodic contours, the tone of the music and pitch relations they are able to learn the music concepts faster, make very limited mistakes, be accurate in their singing and understand the contours a lot better. The resulting performance is equivalent to the performance of an adult (Watson et al., 2014). This shows that synesthesia is really important to those who want to learn music. It helps in their acquisition and sharpening of skills. Students are able to learn more within a short time because of their ability to grasp concepts faster. Those who grab concepts slowly are not able to cover a lot of ground because they are limited to a certain level.
Synthesis develops because it is essential in learning. Learners develop this condition so that they are able to understand the associations between the members of the class of inducers. The two types of synesthesia develop for different reasons but with a common goal of better understanding. Time space synesthesia develops so as to give the learners a better understanding of units of time while grapheme-color synesthesia develops so that children can learn different things about letters. It is because of this reason that synesthesia can be manipulated for different reasons in learning. It can be used as a mnemonic device or an aid for the conscious memory. In adults however it is believed to be automatic because with a wide-ranging rehearsal, the synesthetic relations can become more automatic with time.
Due to synesthesia, synesthetes have developed numerous perceptual, cognitive and personality traits. They have strong cognitive abilities and perceptual that are related to the concurrent and inducer domains. It is because of these traits that many would want to adopt synesthesia as a strategy in learning. Children and adults want to be able to understand what they are reading or learning in school. This will push them to adopt the strategy so as to deal with the difficulty in school. Those desiring to adopt the strategy are more likely going have more than one form of synesthesia because they are interrelated. When one is successful in implementing a strategy to overcome a difficult situation, they are most likely going to adopt the same strategy in dealing with a different challenge that they face.
The styles of learning by synesthetes may be obstacles to those learning. This is because the learners get overwhelmed with the additional information that they collect. An example of this is a student who wants to learn how to play the piano. The student face the challenge of having to identify the three inconsistent and different colors. These colors include one for each of her fingers, the other for the musical pitches and the last one for the notes of music. The inconsistencies obtained become difficult for a synesthetes making them likely to quit the lessons. This is because they find it difficult to comprehend the nature of the colors as it is confusing for them.
This strategy can be distracting when elements such as digits are wrongly colored. Some report feeling uneasy and describe this situation as ugly. These graphemes that are incongruently colored can lead to misjudgments of the emotional valence. When the colors are incongruent, learners perform poorly in their tasks. This is because they mentally translate colors that are incongruent as congruent. They fail to perform well because they get confused. There is also a possibility of synesthetes using similar cognitive resources as the non-synesthetes to recall appointments and how to sing vowels properly.
The mode of mastering skills may be an alternative method but is not a superior way. This is because the superiority that has been claimed by the synesthetes could be due to the failure to imagine how their counterparts, non-synesthetes, go about their daily lives with none of the experiences. It is because of this reason that focusing on the advantages of synesthesia may be misleading as there are important differences that are missing. Another challenge is that each learner develops their own way of understanding a challenging task or subject. An example of these differences in found in learning music where one child will see the notes as colored squares and each color is a representative of its pitch. Another child may see the notes are personified, colored, hopping figures, stick persons and shapes (Watson et al., 2014). This variation is more of a disadvantaged than a benefit because when the children begin to discuss their own understanding they will end up not communicating properly due to the varied perceptions.
Synesthesia is beneficial to children and also to adults. Children are able to grow up with skills they can use and adults are able to adopt these skills to use in their lives. It is a positive attribute that can lead to synesthetes being more creative, innovative and have an improved perception. Learning can be used to develop synesthesia because newer challenges call for strategic methods of dealing with them. In using synesthesia as device that is mnemonic can be explored by children and help in their growth and development. It is beneficial in schools because students are able to involve the various modalities of their senses. Learning of vocabularies in school using colored words are important as they make learning easier and more enjoyable for the children. These benefits are the driving force behind the adoption of this technique.
Individuals can encourage synesthesia by striving to identify their own abilities that are synesthetic. When adults create an environment where they are able to identify their own synesthetic abilities, they also give their children an opportunity to discover theirs. Synesthetic experiences are encouraged in the activities of the day. This can be achieved by exploring synesthesia together with one’s child. Sounds and smells can be perceived and discussed to discover and identify the synesthesia. The advantage of engaging the mind is that it gets to be trained on how to recognize the world in a manner that is synesthetic. Encouragement and support that is given to children to explore their senses can also lead to development of synesthesia and with enough practice it is able to become their lifestyle.
Reading books that as synesthetic in nature also encourages it. Reading books will enable parents and children to understand synesthesia even more and make them to familiarize themselves with it. This will also create confidence in the children to talk about synesthesia and thy will no longer feel like misfits. Engaging the tutors in schools by discussing synesthesia will also ensure that children get to practice at home and in their schools as well. This can also be enhanced by sharing of reading materials about synesthesia. Tutors may choose to adopt it in their mode of teaching and also create an environment where children are able to discover their abilities in synesthesia. Engaging other families with the aim of helping them learn about synesthesia and its benefits is also important. Children who are not doing well in school are able to learn synesthesia and improve their grades in the process.
Synesthesia is beneficial for everyone. People are able to improve their lives and ensure their children grow up all rounded. It should be encouraged in families, schools and in every neighborhood. This is because each individual has a role to play in order for children and even adults to develop their synesthesia. It is more than just recalling events and memorizing dates from the past. It is also more than just a neurological feature. It boosts confidence in people and inspires people to live life and enjoy it in their own special way. Using synesthesia people are accepted just the way they are regardless of how they personify numbers or taste and read colors.
References
Bankieris, K., R., and Aslin, R., N., (2016) Explicit Associative Learning and Memory in Synesthetes and Nonsynesthetes . University of Rochester, USA
Beat Meier and Nicolas Meier, B. and Rothen, N., (2013) Chapter 35: Synesthesia and Memory. Retrieved from http://www.apn.psy.unibe.ch
Watson, M. R., Akins, K. A., Spiker, C., Crawford, L., & Enns, J. T. (2014). Synesthesia and Learning: A Critical Review and Novel Theory. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 98. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00098
Wheeler, K., L., (2013) Understanding Synesthesia and Impact for Learning. San Rafael, California
