Normal_Anomaly comments on How is your mind different from everyone else's? - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 05 December 2011 08:38AM

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Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 December 2011 10:00:45PM 2 points [-]

I find this amazing. I have no visualization for numbers at all. I do have weak color associations, though:
0-black
1-red
2-blue
3-yellow
4-orange
5-brown
6-green
7-silver-gray
8-teal
9-blue-gray

The associations are stronger for 1-6 than 7-9, and usually only noticeable when appearing as groups of consecutive digits, eg 34. I don't actually perceive the numbers as being those colors when I see them on a page, but they have the colors in my mental imagery.

Comment author: Sarokrae 19 March 2012 09:14:30PM *  0 points [-]

I'm in an almost entirely similar place with number synaesthesia: absolutely no positional awareness for them, and colours for each digit. If I visualise a longer number I visualise the digits as being different colours.

Interestingly, I have the same colours as you for 1, 2 and 3, then:

4 - green 5 - pink 6 - light blue 7 - gold 8 - dark green 9 - dark orange 0 - grey/colourless.

Unlike you, all my colour associations are equally strong, and very usefully, even digits are cold colours, and odd digits warm colours.

I also have colour associations for some but not all letters (but English isn't my first language), and some but not all music notes. I suspect that these associations arose partly from the number colours, but I have no idea why "w" is the same green as "8", and "f" the colour for 5 and not 4.