#ticker tape synesthesia

[synesthete-culture-is]

ticker tape synesthesia culture is not noticing when the captions turn off

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[writerwithasideofrandom]

Difference Between Projective and Associative Synesthesia

Okay, this confuses the stuffing out of people sometimes (at least, it used to for me), so I decided to write a post on it.

There are two umbrellas that someone’s synesthesia can fall under: projective and associative.

Projective synesthesia is likely the first kind you’ll hear of when you stumble across the topic of synesthesia. This is where your pairings are projected outward into your peripheral vision. Someone with grapheme-color synesthesia (projective) would see words/letters/numbers/etc. in their “proper” colors. For example, if they saw the word “kite” as purple, the word “kite” would literally appear to be purple, even though it may be written in black text. For someone with ticker tape synesthesia (projective), they literally see “subtitles” in their peripheral vision spelling out everything that someone is saying. These subtitles can be located anywhere in their peripheral vision. Someone with lexical gustatory synesthesia (projective), which is sight to taste, will literally taste the words/numbers/letters they see/hear. 

Associative synesthesia is where you see your pairings only in your mind, rather than in your peripheral vision. You know how when you remember something--an event, a person, etc.--and you see it in your mind, but not in the world around you? That’s the same place that associative synesthetes see their pairings. For lack of a better term, I call this the mental realm. I believe I’m the only one that really uses that term to describe it, but I could be wrong. Regardless, people with associative synesthesia see their pairings in their mental realm or have a very strong association between two things. For someone with lexical-gustatory synesthesia (associative), the letter Y may very obviously taste like watermelon without them physically tasting watermelon. For those with chromesthesia/sound-color synesthesia, perhaps “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles is clearly blue and brown (which they see in their mental realm).

Every single type of synesthesia (as far as I know) has the capability of being either projective or associative in a synesthete. Associative synesthesia is every bit as legitimate as projective synesthesia, but tends to be a bit harder to discover since it’s more subtle.

I’m currently open for asks, so let me know if you have any questions!

[autism-asks]

Iiaat/neurodivergent thing to actually visualize answers? I feel like the misconception of Autistics/“brainiacs” on television having floating equations around their head actually does represent /kinda/ what happens with me. Even since I was little I’ve been able to “look up into the sky” and see the answers to things/equations (according to my mother). Especially with harder problems I see the chart/numbers/variables like the TV thing.

This sounds like it could be a variation on ticker tape synesthesia.  Synesthesia isn’t an autism thing, but does seem to be more common among autistic people than the general population.

-Liz

[chasingalima]

Decent article.

[synesthete-culture-is]

ticker tape synesthesia culture is being really good at spelling people's foreign-language names on the first try

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[synesthete-culture-is]

do you take submissions about ticker tape synesthesia? I just found out there's a name for what I have (I always called it "seeing subtitles") but I know not everyone considers it to be a form of synesthesia rather than its own thing

Funny little story - I experience this too pretty much any time someone is speaking, and one time I looked it up and found the term ticker tape synesthesia. I personally am not sure if, individually, it is its own form of synesthesia. However, considering it's a sort of internal sensory experience caused by an external one, I'd say it falls into the realm of a lot of our experiences. So, short answer: yes, I will take submissions about it!

[synesthete-culture-is]

ticker-tape synesthesia culture is misspelling a word in your mind's eye and not being able to understand what you're hearing until you correct the spelling!

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Ticker taping culture is not knowing whether you have pretty good auditory processing or whether your auditory processing is actually terrible, but you can just read lectures and conversations off your subtitles

(This may not actually be how brains work at all! That’s the problem, though—there’s so little research about ticker taping that I don’t know whether it uses auditory processing pathways or not.)

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