Olga Bogdashina is Professor, Chief Research Fellow and Lecturer at the International Autism Institute, co-founder of the International Consortium of Autism Institutes, and Visiting Lecturer and Associate Consultant (Autism) to the European Institute of Child Education and Psychology (ICEP Europe). Olga shares her experience and insight into synaesthesia in autistic people.

A person with synaesthesia can:

• see sounds
• smell colours
• taste shapes
• feel sounds on the skin
• hear colours.

Although not specific to autism, synaesthesia seems to be quite common among autistic individuals.

“Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing…Tuesdays are a warm colour while Thursdays are fuzzy”

 

Tammet 2006

Quite common in autistic pople is the form of synaesthesia that produces tactile sensations without the individual being physically touched, for example, looking at something can bring a tactile experience. Alternatively, when somebody looks (or stares) at them directly, they feel it on the skin. Some autistic individuals experience ‘being touched’ by sounds, in other words, certain sounds are more felt than seen. 

Lucy Blackman (2001) calls this phenomenon ‘sound-feeling’. Often the skin sensation comes from sounds other people cannot hear. But there are no strict rules as the experiences, interpretation and response change at different times. Some can be even hit by sounds. What is even more interesting, the sound can be both felt on their skin and seen by their eyes simultaneously. Too much noise creates visual chaos – making it impossible to interpret their environment and comprehend what is going on around them. 

Different variations and forms of synaesthesia. 

According to the number of senses involved, synaesthesia can be of two types: 

1.    Two-sensory (or bimodal) synaesthesia

When stimulation of one sensory area triggers the perception in a second area. There can be many different combinations of senses.  For example: 

• coloured-hearing (when a sound triggers the perception of a colour)
• coloured-olfaction (when a smell triggers the perception of a colour); coloured-tactility (when a touch triggers a colour)
• coloured-gustation (when a taste triggers the perception of a colour)
• tactile-hearing (when a sound triggers tactile sensation)
• tactile-vision (when a sight triggers feeling shapes and textures pressing the skin); 
• tactile-gustation (when a taste is experienced as a shape)
• audiomotor (when the sounds of different words trigger different postures or movements of the body) etc...

2.    Multiple sensory (or multimodal) synaesthesia

When stimulation of one sensory area triggers simultaneous sensations in several other senses, e.g. a child may experience the taste of the sound while simultaneously seeing the colour and experiencing tickling sensation on the skin. 

Another major distinction is made between sensory synaesthesia and cognitive synaesthesia. Cognitive synaesthesia combines sensory (usually colour) and semantic triggers – letters, words and numbers - when letters/words/numbers are heard or read they are experienced as colours; or numbers are experienced as shapes or forms. 

Another variation of the cognitive synaesthesia is conceptual synaesthesia, when abstract concepts (for example, units of time, mathematical operations) are perceived as shapes or colours. So the answer to 6+2 may be ‘green’.   

Prevalence

The research of prevalence shows that 2-5% of the population have synaesthesia (Simner et al. 2006). Though the fact that synaesthesia does occur in autistic people is recognised, it is considered to be rare. Probably, the reported low incidence of synaesthesia in autistic people can be accounted for by the fact that it is not easily detected in the autistic population because many autistic children with synaesthesia don’t realise that other people cannot hear sounds while seeing colours. 

Features of synaesthesia

Synaesthetic experience is very individual; for example, among people who see coloured sounds there is no specific colour for each sound from person to person. Learning disabilities seem more common in synaesthetes. 

There are some general features of synaesthesia, suggested by Cytowic (1995/2002):

• Synaesthesia is involuntary. It is a passive experience that happens to someone. The sensations cannot be suppressed or incurred, though the intensity is influenced by the situation they occur in. 
• Synaesthesia is projected into the environment: it is not just in the head but the individual actually sees a sound, hears a sight, etc... 
• Synaesthetic perceptions are durable and generic, i.e. they do not change over time or situation and they are always experienced with the stimulus.
• Synaesthesia is memorable: the synaesthetic sensations are remembered best.
• Synaesthesia is emotional: having this experience causes pleasure.

Synaesthetes are observed to have uneven cognitive skills. They are reported to prefer order, neatness, symmetry and balance. Most commonly reported are right-left confusion (allochiria), poor maths skills and a poor sense of direction. Here there may be some similarity between the synaesthetic and autistic features.

One of the most common features of synaesthetes is their superior memory (due to their parallel sensations). Synaesthetes often remember the secondary perception better than the primary one. Some people may forget the name of the person they know but remember the colour, or taste, or even the temperature of the word. They often remember conversations, verbal instructions, movie dialogues, text blocks in books, precise location of objects, furniture arrangements, etc... in great detail.  

Professional experience

One of my first experiences of synaesthesia in autistic people was during my teaching days at a school for autistic children. I brought some coloured alphabet blocks into the classroom for fun learning. But seven year-old Lena definitely didn’t think this idea was much fun. She grabbed a block and threw it across the room: “The colour is wrong!” “C” isn’t yellow, it’s brown!” More blocks (with Lena’s commentaries) followed the first one.

Daniel Tammet, an autistic adult describes fascinating ways he perceives numbers and words. He explains that often the colour of the word depends on the initial letter:

“Yoghurt’ is a yellow word, ‘video’ is purple (perhaps linked with ‘violet’) and ‘gate’ is green. I can even make the colour of a word change by mentally adding initial letters to turn the word into another: ‘at’ is a red word, but add the letter T to make ‘that’, the word’s colour is now orange. Not all words fit the initial letter pattern: words beginning with the letter A, for example, are always red and those beginning with W are always dark blue”. 

 

Tammet 2006

Many synaesthetes have more than one form of synaesthesia. More often synaesthesia is unidirectional, for example, sight may be experienced as touch but touch does not trigger visual perceptions. 

Most people with synaesthesia do not complain of their condition because for them it is their normal perception of the world and they are not aware of it causing any disadvantages. Moreover, they often enjoy it and think that losing their unique perception would be upsetting. When asked if they’d want to get rid of their synaesthetic experiences, most would say ‘no’, because they see their condition not as a problem but rather as a different (and wonderful!) way to perceive the world, and they cannot imagine their life without it.  

However, when synaesthesia is ‘two-ways’ (for example, a person with synaesthesia not only sees colours when they hear sounds, but also hears sounds whenever they see colours), the individual can really struggle: they can experience stress, dizziness and information overload. Because of this, they may avoid noisy or colourful places, and may withdraw completely. And if the synaesthete is also autstic (with other sensory differences as well) it becomes harder to deal with sensory overload. 

A person can experience problems comminicating with others because the voice hurts or sends flashes of colour that disrupts the understanding. Or the voice may be so pleasant (with pleasurable sensory experiences – colour, movement, etc.) and fascinating that the person cannot focus on the conversation and lose the meaning of verbal utterances.

When Alex (an autistic child with synaesthesia) is in a state of sensory overload, his synaesthetic experiences can lead to ‘panic attacks’ and aggression. After one of these ‘incidents’ he tried to give his explanation of what had happened:

"In the shop I heard black, then the word broke down into pieces and they entered my eye. I became blind because everything was black.” 

At the time I was bewildered with his explanation, and placed his ‘reports’ into the category ‘confusing’. However, in 2011 I came across the account by Brian King, a social worker who is autistic himself. King says that when he is listening to someone speak, he can see each word; words scroll through the air in front of him. If someone repeats a word in a conversation Brian sees it in a darker colour; and if his communicative partner emphasises that word while speaking, it literally jumps out at him like 3D. So Alex sees not only colours in response to sounds, but also words (yes, words) when he hears them. 

Many autistic people with synaesthesia cherish their unique perspectives as a valid way to perceive the world around them:

“I gain so much beauty and meaning from the way my senses work! My hearing is oversensitive and this is bothersome at times, but I wouldn’t change it because I don’t want to lose the colors of voices and the tactility of music.”

 

Sinclair 1998