You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right?

Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by frikk on Tuesday February 23, 2016 @07:09PM (#11163465)

Ever since I was a kid, there are some things that, when I mentally picture them, have associated colors bound to them. Days of the week are pretty clear for me.

Monday is red, Tuesday and Thursday are green. Wednesday is a light blue, Friday is red (feels a bit warmer, maybe slightly orange than Monday). Saturday is yellow, Sunday is black (I always associated Sunday with church, and either dread of going or formal wear).

I do this with other things too but days of the week are the most obvious and have been with me my whole life (I'm 30 now).

Oh, I guess I do the inner monologue when estimating time. Something like "Lets see... is it 8 minutes? No that's too fast. 12 minutes? Maybe. Let's go with 11". Didn't even consider it as part of the process until your comment.

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Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by gh02t on Tuesday February 23, 2016 @07:20PM (#11163514)

Sounds like synesthesia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia ). People with synesthesia tend to associate colors with numbers or similar. Often it's extremely specific colors, like "deep electric purple with sparkles" for 125. These colors can be consistently identified and described across multiple tests, suggesting that the person actually maintains a consistent inner representation of numbers in terms of color.

Associating colors with days of the week is another well known example, described in the book "Wednesday is Indigo Blue" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday_Is_Indigo_Blue ). You might find it interesting.

I only know about this because I had a friend in middle school who was a synesthete. We thought he was making it up until we gave him a list of (long) random numbers to describe the colors of. We then mixed up the order and gave them to him a week later and he provided consistent descriptions. It was pretty cool actually, I've always been a bit envious.

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Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by frikk on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @04:30PM (#11170386)

Yeah, that's fascinating. I didn't realize there was a name, or even that the colors and days of the week is a thing that other people experience. How weird is it that my Wednesday is blue too?

Thanks for sharing, I've got some reading to do.

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Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by Starwatcher2001 on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @07:55AM (#11166330)

As gh02t says, this sounds very much like synesthesia, which my wife also has. Her colours differ to yours, she sees Tuesday as blue. May I ask if it causes you problems reading, particularly coloured lettering? Words written in colours are difficult to recognise as the actual colours clash with how she sees them. "Rainbow" sentences like a child would write with different colours are almost impossible for her to decipher.

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Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by frikk on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @04:29PM (#11170383)

Hi Starwatcher. I had never even considered that this has a name, much less that it's common enough for other people to associate with it too. Cool.

I love to read, actually. As far as I know I haven't noticed any difficulty in colors. I can definitely see a word "red" that may have been written in blue color really screwing with me, but maybe not more than it would screw with any other person.

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