What Color is the Letter ‘A’?

After hearing about Shane’s possible synesthesia – the “condition” that allows him to apply colors to the letters of the alphabet – I decided to do a simple test.

I asked him, “What color is the letter ‘A’?”

Shane said, “Green.”

I typed “A – green” into a new document. I scrolled down and typed, B.

“What color is the letter ‘B’?”

“Blue.”

I typed “B – blue.”

We went through every letter, with Shane giving me the letter’s color. It was kind of a fun game. Many of the letters were the same color – some were blue and some were dark blue, for example. There weren’t 26 different colors. So after the test, I didn’t think much about it.

I waited more than a month. I never said another word about it to Shane.

Then, almost on a whim, with the original document still sitting on my computer desktop, I said, “Hey Shane, what color is the letter ‘A’?”

“Green,” he said.

“What color is the letter ‘B’?”

“Blue,” Shane said.

At first, I thought he had memorized the colors – but then I realized that I’d only asked him once. I never mentioned it again, and he didn’t have access to the document on my computer.

So we went through the rest of the alphabet.

Shane’s colors didn’t vary for 20 out of 26 letters.

According to the little I’ve read about it, that is substantially more synesthesia ability than most people have. Three of his letters – Q, R and T – were drastically different from the first time, but the other two were almost the same color.  I found it interesting that he had two that were ‘pinkish red’ the first time and, the second time, one was pink and one was red.

So, according to the test, he does have some synesthesia. Next up: the Synesthesia Battery test on the internet.

Just for fun.

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