I see a monkey wrench winging its way about the Stroop test. Overall, I’m able to see and name a color for what it is by shutting off the reading component. For me, however, deciding what to name a given color (Is that a tan?) clouds things a bit. Maybe I should just stick with the color names printed in the chart, but my ignoring them denies me their access. I get the feeling that one is not bidden to study the chart in advance, but simply to dive in.

I’ve taken this sort of Stroop effect test a few times before. Actually, depending on how hard I’m concentrating and how tired I am, I can be pretty fast at it, because I activate my coping mechanism of *tuning out* both the colors a word is printed in and my perception of its colors just to be able to comprehend its meaning. When I am tired it takes me a vvveeeerrry long time to read the words, and even then I’m not certain I’m right. Of course, the entire time I’m reading a list like that, or looking at any physically colored text, a small part of the back corner of my mind is screaming that it’s just wrong.

Jay,

My A is red. There have been letter/color combinations found to be more common among syns (red As are one of them), and there hasn’t been an explanation accepted by consensus in the scientific community as of yet, that I know of. Serious neuroscientific cognitive research into the *condition* began fairly recently in modern times, so much is still unexplained. I can’t imagine not having it.

Thank you so much for sharing your perceptions with us. If you don’t mind a little experiment, I wonder whether you have more or less difficulty than a person without syn in saying the colors of words in a test like this one. I find I’m quite slow at it.

Even absent syn, seeking agreement on titles is maddening since it’s a marketing decision, not an artistic one.

Sorry to disappoint. Somebody once gave me a bag of marijuana and it sat in a cabinet for a long time and became a kind of dust that I threw away. I promised myself an old age full of dissolution and substance abuse. I’m not there yet and likely never will be.

I wish you the best in your pitch-perfect quest.

Before going to the Wicki article, allow me to ask a few questions that I’m sure will be answered therein.

Is the letter “a” green to you? Some time back a few of us, with our compartmentalized senses, played a little parlor game. We announced individual numbers and letters and asked the members of the group to tell what colors came to mind. Nobody was keeping minutes, but I remember a remarkable concurrence of response. There may have been a little “I’ll have what she’s having.” going on - but even then the agreement was unexpected.

In a related sense can there be an informational analogue to this phenomenon? For example, inanimate objects often remind me of people. It’s not associative in the sense of a Prius looking like Bettye who owns one, but something more smeary and generalized. For example, we might be passing a diner and I’ll say to Matt: “Does that diner remind you of Richard Nixon?”. He’ll say:”Kinda.”, having put up with kind of thing for so long and resigned to it. But then this might just be a habit of mind rather than a structural thing.

Most syn responses are not overwhelming and do not impact normal living, although there is a school of thought that some autistics may have syn responses that are experienced to such a degree that they interfere with their ability to function because of the overstimulation.

Okay, so how to describe the ineffable? To use your example, when you go out and are accosted by the medley of sound, can you concentrate on one, a dog barking say, and tune the rest out? The level of the individual sounds hasn’t changed, but focusing on one can bring it to the fore. Or, if you’re concentrating on something internally, can you tune out all of the sounds so that it’s merely a background hum that doesn’t draw particular attention or distract you?

All letters for me have individual colors, unchanging - a is always red, e is always blue. Combinations of letters and words evoke a slightly different response. It doesn’t matter whether the letters are written or only pictured in my mind’s eye, the colors are ever-present. Most of the time I can suppress (tune out) the response so that I can read a book, or write on a computer, and not be distracted by the individual colors, in essence the colors become the background hum. When I’m tired, it takes more of a conscious effort and the color responses are more likely to be distracting so that I can’t concentrate on what I’m reading or writing (hard when you’re working to a deadline!)

Words and letters fascinate me, I have over 600 fonts on my computer. I’ve had this perceptional difference all my life and didn’t realize that other people didn’t until I was about 23 and didn’t know it had a name until I was 25. One of the pros of this form of syn for me is that I am a really good speller. When a word is spelled incorrectly, the colors are wrong. I can also remember phone numbers easily. I learn other languages fairly quickly (the written form especially).

One of the cons is that, as a visual artist, it can take me longer to name a piece than to make it. Not only does the meaning or intent of the word or phrase need to be appropriate to the piece, but the colors of the word or phrase have to work. In the same way that you wouldn’t necessarily name a piece about the war Goodness and Light, I wouldn’t be able to name a dark red and purple piece Goodness and Light (that phrase is very white, beige, pale blue and yellow - again not adequately describing the actual colors and combinations). On the plus side sometimes a word can trigger a piece, due to its colors.

It’s also very hard to explain to other people, most especially in a professional context. How do I explain to an editor/publisher that the colors of the words of the title of my book are vitally important to me without sounding like a complete loony tune?