The goal of the research is to add more languages to the synesthesia database to better understand the underlying mechanisms of language learning and development. To date, research on synesthesia in the Hungarian language has not been conducted, although our language has several linguistic characteristics, which would further deepen the understanding of the mechanism of synaesthesia.
Synesthesia, as we wrote previously, is a cognitive state in which sensory experiences are mixed: letters can have a color, but the sounds of music can also be associated with colors, as is the case with the days of the week. It is a neurological phenomenon when a stimulus stimulates several senses, i.e. colors, numbers, or even spatial shapes and days of the week are associated. During his examination, connections were found in both the neurological and genetic domains. A large study conducted in the United Kingdom revealed that about four percent of the population suffers from some form of synaesthesia, but people often do not realize they have it. Their associations are across the senses They are unusual.
Colored Water International
Flora Paragi also wrote her diploma thesis on this topic under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Root, and still works part-time at the university. We asked where the study of synaesthesia is now and what it has revealed for us Hungarians.
He says that 3-4% of the population can see colored letters, which helps them be creative and learn the language. The tendency to synesthesia can be transmitted from father to son, and from mother to daughter, that is, it is genetically determined. The most common type is the association of letters with colors, but some people also see numbers and sounds with colors. The large Dutch research began in 2018, but there were already studies in English, and now they have been supplemented by Greek, Spanish, Korean, Japanese and Hungarian data, which Flora teased.
Hungarian is more similar to Korean and Japanese than English, because it is also an agglutinative language, that is, it attaches suffixes to words. The pronunciation is related to colour, but not in English, because there can be many different pronunciations.
Flora Paragi says their collaboration with Waldorf schools has only just begun, because the teaching method there encourages sensory connections. What are the factors that depend on languages? In Hungarian, for example, the special high-sounding word gets a high-sounding suffix, and this deep-sounding difference also gives different color results. It doesn't work in other languages. But it also turns out that different letter shapes will have similar colors in the alphabet, for example b and p are a shadow.
As Flora reveals, the background to synesthesia is that the area of the brain responsible for vision is close to the area of the brain responsible for learning letters, and the two areas communicate better. They also learn a foreign language faster, because they can associate not only the letter, but also the color.
Who is considered to have synesthesia? To measure this, the letters of the alphabet are displayed three times in a random manner, and the person can adjust the colors that correspond to which letter. If someone definitely chooses the same color, they have synesthesia, but this is measured by a fixed number. If someone was under it, it turned out to be.
But as I said, there is a problem with this, the factors can differ from one language to another, so this specific cutoff number will be different. The measurement method still needs improvement.
Creativity enhancer
The link to creativity was also revealed in the Hungarian summer survey, where there were more entertainers (artists and musicians) among those with synaesthesia, and on average speaking more languages than non-synaesthetic participants. Van Gogh and Johann Sebastian Bach were also synesthetes, as was the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who inherited it from his mother, or Ferenc Liszt.
Flora says it will be important to pay attention to synesthesia in education, which is often misdiagnosed and described as dyslexia in children who have difficulty reading or writing just because of color confusion.
If they learn the colored letters first, they can be represented by legal colors (depending on synesthesia). Most colors suit everyone, for example, A is red for most synaesthetes. If we pay attention to colors, we can help children with synesthesia learn to read.
Synesthetes' thinking is logical: in the case of double letters the colors merge, so if D is red and Z is yellow, then DZ will be orange. “Highlighting digraphs or color coding to differentiate phonemes can help dyslexic readers recognize and process complex letter combinations more easily, which can improve reading fluency and comprehension.”
In addition to letter-sound synesthesia, there is also spatial synaesthesia, or tactile synesthesia, when materials with different textures (rough and smooth) are associated with different colors. These are less researched areas.
(Cover image: Flora Paragi. Photo: Kata Nemeth / Index)
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