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4:45pm May 23, 2014
[Image shows a screenshot of my results on a test called The Synesthesia Battery.  Types of synesthesia you have:  Absolute pitch/perfect pitch, numbers -> color, letters -> color, weekdays -> color, pain -> color, personalities -> color.] In other words, fuck you to the person who said I was lying about my synesthesia. Why was I supposedly lying about my synesthesia? Because at one point I described my 5 as “olive green”, and another time as “dog turd brown”. And because this person had a grudge and was looking for any reason to be an ass, but anyway. Why did I say that about 5? Because there’s a whole range of colors that I view as roughly the same color.  It ranges from dark yellow, to greenish tan, to tan. One time I made a web page with a background that was one of those colors, and someone called it “olive”. 5 is also within that range of colors. So I called it “olive” once.  And “dog turd brown” another time.  Because someone had called a color in that range “olive”.  (Plus if you look at olives and dog turds, there’s plenty of overlap in color.  And you tend to add the word “green” to olive and “brown” to dog turd regardless of the actual colors involved, just because that’s how language works.  At least, that’s how my language works.) Anyway, my synesthesia is so verified-real that they’re now wanting me to participate in a genetic study about synesthesia.  You have to go through a battery of tests to prove that you have real synesthesia, before you can take part in the study.  I scored well in the range of having real synesthesia (especially on the test where you have a split second to say whether a number or letter is the right color or not), as well as well into the range of having absolute pitch (I don’t know why they tested that). I don’t know why I felt like I had anything to prove, but good grief.  This is why I think it’s so important for people to assume good faith when communicating.  It would not have taken long for me to clear up why “olive green” and “dog turd brown” described the same color, and clear up why my language skills work in a way that I would have said those things, and so forth.  But instead it had to be “She must be lying about her synesthesia, which means she’s probably lying about lots of things.” Another thing she didn’t like about what I said about synesthesia, is that I talked about the way that sensory overload can cause changes in people’s synesthesia.  She claimed that this never happens to people. Certainly, sensory overload has never changed my colored letters and numbers to any degree at all.  But sensory overload does (for me and many other autistic people) cause a kind of sensory bleed-over effect, which causes one sense to bleed over into another, in a way that is chaotic and not as uniform as normal synesthesia.  Like normal synesthesia, the same stimulus always causes the same response, unless affected in some way by drugs or something.  Sensory bleed-over synesthesia can cause completely chaotic bleeding-over synesthesia that doesn’t stay the same over time. I know this from talking to lots of autistic synesthetes personally.  As well as some autistic people who are not normally synesthetes but who do experience temporary synesthesia when sufficiently overloaded.   I also used to spend a lot of time talking to other synesthetes, and many of us found that we did have experiences that were outside the realm of what “standard” synesthesia is supposed to be like.  For instance, some of us had synesthesia that was not prominent or memorable.  Some of us had synesthesia that changed over time.  Those things are not “supposed” to happen, but for some people, they did happen. But apparently the way I describe colors, and the fact that I get my ideas about autism and synesthesia from synesthetes and autistic people, rather than from synesthesia researchers, means that I’m untrustworthy and should not be listened to about anything. But actual researchers beg to differ, apparently.  :-) Oh and for my actual scores: Grapheme color picker test: 0.49.  0.0 would be a perfect score, below 1.0 is the threshold for synesthesia, and 2.0 would be what a non-synesthete would get if they were concentrating really hard and using a lot of strategies to fake synesthesia. Speed-congruency test (where they flash a letter for a split second and you have to say whether it’s the right synesthetic color or not): 97.14%.  A score between 85% and 100% indicates synesthesia.  My mean reaction time was 1.353 seconds +/- 0.589. Weekday color-picker test: 0.49.   Vividness of visual imagery:  2.59375 (They don’t tell you quite what that means.  I think it means that I don't have very vivid visual imagery.  They’re trying to study whether synesthetes have better visual imagery or not.) Projector-Associator: -2.5 This shows that I see the colored letters in my head, not on the paper.  (Which explains why I don’t get colors 100% perfect when I try to show what they are.  It’s really hard to translate a color in my head to a color on a computer screen.  But even so, I was very consistent and accurate.) Absolute pitch test: Your pure tone score is 32.75 and piano score is 31.5 In a similar test, those with absolute pitch were classified according to the following key:AP-1 pure-tone score > 24.49AP-2 pure-tone score between 22.11 and 24.49 and a piano-tone score > 27.79AP-3 pure-tone score between 22.11 and 24.49 and a piano-tone score < 27.79AP-4 pure-tone score < 22.11 and a piano-tone score > 27.79 So basically I’m way into the range of having absolute pitch. So… yeah.

[Image shows a screenshot of my results on a test called The Synesthesia Battery.  Types of synesthesia you have:  Absolute pitch/perfect pitch, numbers -> color, letters -> color, weekdays -> color, pain -> color, personalities -> color.]

In other words, fuck you to the person who said I was lying about my synesthesia.

Why was I supposedly lying about my synesthesia?

Because at one point I described my 5 as “olive green”, and another time as “dog turd brown”.

And because this person had a grudge and was looking for any reason to be an ass, but anyway.

Why did I say that about 5?

Because there’s a whole range of colors that I view as roughly the same color.  It ranges from dark yellow, to greenish tan, to tan.

One time I made a web page with a background that was one of those colors, and someone called it “olive”.

5 is also within that range of colors.

So I called it “olive” once.  And “dog turd brown” another time.  Because someone had called a color in that range “olive”.  (Plus if you look at olives and dog turds, there’s plenty of overlap in color.  And you tend to add the word “green” to olive and “brown” to dog turd regardless of the actual colors involved, just because that’s how language works.  At least, that’s how my language works.)

Anyway, my synesthesia is so verified-real that they’re now wanting me to participate in a genetic study about synesthesia.  You have to go through a battery of tests to prove that you have real synesthesia, before you can take part in the study.  I scored well in the range of having real synesthesia (especially on the test where you have a split second to say whether a number or letter is the right color or not), as well as well into the range of having absolute pitch (I don’t know why they tested that).

I don’t know why I felt like I had anything to prove, but good grief.  This is why I think it’s so important for people to assume good faith when communicating.  It would not have taken long for me to clear up why “olive green” and “dog turd brown” described the same color, and clear up why my language skills work in a way that I would have said those things, and so forth.  But instead it had to be “She must be lying about her synesthesia, which means she’s probably lying about lots of things.”

Another thing she didn’t like about what I said about synesthesia, is that I talked about the way that sensory overload can cause changes in people’s synesthesia.  She claimed that this never happens to people.

Certainly, sensory overload has never changed my colored letters and numbers to any degree at all.  But sensory overload does (for me and many other autistic people) cause a kind of sensory bleed-over effect, which causes one sense to bleed over into another, in a way that is chaotic and not as uniform as normal synesthesia.  Like normal synesthesia, the same stimulus always causes the same response, unless affected in some way by drugs or something.  Sensory bleed-over synesthesia can cause completely chaotic bleeding-over synesthesia that doesn’t stay the same over time.

I know this from talking to lots of autistic synesthetes personally.  As well as some autistic people who are not normally synesthetes but who do experience temporary synesthesia when sufficiently overloaded.  

I also used to spend a lot of time talking to other synesthetes, and many of us found that we did have experiences that were outside the realm of what “standard” synesthesia is supposed to be like.  For instance, some of us had synesthesia that was not prominent or memorable.  Some of us had synesthesia that changed over time.  Those things are not “supposed” to happen, but for some people, they did happen.

But apparently the way I describe colors, and the fact that I get my ideas about autism and synesthesia from synesthetes and autistic people, rather than from synesthesia researchers, means that I’m untrustworthy and should not be listened to about anything.

But actual researchers beg to differ, apparently.  :-)

Oh and for my actual scores:

Grapheme color picker test: 0.49.  0.0 would be a perfect score, below 1.0 is the threshold for synesthesia, and 2.0 would be what a non-synesthete would get if they were concentrating really hard and using a lot of strategies to fake synesthesia.

Speed-congruency test (where they flash a letter for a split second and you have to say whether it’s the right synesthetic color or not): 97.14%.  A score between 85% and 100% indicates synesthesia.  My mean reaction time was 1.353 seconds +/- 0.589.

Weekday color-picker test: 0.49.  

Vividness of visual imagery:  2.59375

(They don’t tell you quite what that means.  I think it means that I don't have very vivid visual imagery.  They’re trying to study whether synesthetes have better visual imagery or not.)

Projector-Associator: -2.5

This shows that I see the colored letters in my head, not on the paper.  (Which explains why I don’t get colors 100% perfect when I try to show what they are.  It’s really hard to translate a color in my head to a color on a computer screen.  But even so, I was very consistent and accurate.)

Absolute pitch test: Your pure tone score is 32.75 and piano score is 31.5

In a similar test, those with absolute pitch were classified according to the following key:
AP-1 pure-tone score > 24.49
AP-2 pure-tone score between 22.11 and 24.49 and a piano-tone score > 27.79
AP-3 pure-tone score between 22.11 and 24.49 and a piano-tone score < 27.79
AP-4 pure-tone score < 22.11 and a piano-tone score > 27.79

So basically I’m way into the range of having absolute pitch.

So… yeah.