原创 Understanding synaesthesia (Part 2)

[Continued from Understanding synaesthesia (Part 1)]

So I started wondering, are there any synaesthetic digital logic designers out there who would associate different colors with the various symbols. Anyway, I began to ask around in various blogs and articles. Eventually I heard from an electrical engineer called Jordan A. Mills, who says that he does indeed perceive different colors when looking at gate-level schematic diagrams. Jordan was kind enough to take a simple black-and-white schematic I created in Visio and to modify it to reflect the way in which he perceives it as shown below.

In Jordan's case, the shapes of graphic elements seem to be irrelevant to his synaesthetic perception. A small example is the triangular clock input to the flipflop, which is "yellow and sharp" (Jordan's words). By comparison, the triangular inverter bodies are "red and sharp" while the bobbles on the inverters are "yellow and smooth".

Interestingly enough, Jordan noted that – while adding these colors – if he paused to think about what he was doing his perception changed. In this case, he had to stop and think about something else for a second and then return to the diagram to make sure his perception wasn't skewed. (Jordan also commented that this does not happen for glyphs he uses regularly such as letters and numbers – in those cases, his perception is immediate and unchanging.)

But wait, there's more. During the course of our conversations, Jordan mentioned that he also perceives colors and textures when looking at flowcharts. I'd never even considered this, so I created a quick example in Visio and sent it to him.

Jordan responded with the colored version of the chart shown below. He noted that – in addition to colors – he also perceives "textures" associated with the various shapes. In the case of a flowchart, the action rectangles have "soft" edges, while the decision diamonds have "sharp" or "pointy" edges.

Strange as it may seem, although the concept of synaesthesia has been around for a long time, until recently no one actually knew whether these effects were actually being perceived as described by the individuals concerned, or if they were a byproduct of some other psychological mechanism such as memory. However, it is now widely agreed that synaesthetic colors are perceived in a realistic way, just as reported by synaesthetes (I never doubted it for a moment).