All the types in the table are linked to their respective pages.
The percentages are very approximate and are based on the existing studies and on personal intuition in the cases for which there are no figures. They refer to the percentage of the synesthetic population that could have each type. The synesthetic population probably consists of around 4% of the general population.
The lists of types in each of the four boxes are ordered alphabetically, not from more to less common.
*Marked with an asterisk: as I have not been able to find any conclusive studies, I have taken the liberty of making an estimate based on what I have read and observed over the last few years.
**Marked with two asterisks: these are personal impressions as it is currently impossible to establish a prevalence for these types. See the note at the end of this page as to why not.
|
More than 50% |
15% – 50% |
1% – 15% |
Less than 1% |
|
Very common |
Common |
Not so common |
Uncommon |
Grapheme-colour (letters, written words, numbers) (Grapheme-colour can actually be considered a type of Coloured sequence synesthesia, making this group of synesthesias in general the most common of all)
|
Auditory-visual / chromesthesia
Coloured sequences (time units such as days and months, and other sequences)
Ordinal linguistic personification (letters and/or numbers)**
|
Auditory-gustatory (sound
or music-taste) Auditory-olfactory (sound
or music-smell) Aura (projective personality-colour synesthesia) Duality synesthesia (masculine/feminine, heavy/light, rounded/pointy etc.)* Gustatory-visual (taste-colour and taste-shape) Lexeme-colour and morpheme-colour Lexical-olfactory* Mirror touch** Motion-to-sound synesthesia (observed movement-sound) Motor (or kinetic/kinesthetic) synesthesia Olfactory-visual (smell-colour and smell-shape) Personification of days or months* Phoneme-colour Sexual (and romantic) synesthesia* Stimulus-parity (odd/even)* |
Auditory-motor (involuntary movements in response to sounds)* Grapheme-smell (numbers and letters) Grapheme-sound (numbers and letters) Grapheme-taste (numbers and letters) Grapheme-temperature (numbers and letters)* Gustatory-auditory (taste-sound)Kinetics-sound (own body movements) Mathematical concepts-vision synesthesias Perceived emotion-colour-smell-taste-touch (emotions observed in others) Personification of musical sequences Tactile-emotion (texture-emotion)
|
|
More than 50% |
15% – 50% |
1% – 15% |
Less than 1% |
|
Very common |
Common |
Not so common |
Uncommon |
Note: this
table does not contain a list of all the existing types of synesthesia, it is
just a route for finding information on this website.
This page last updated: 15 August 2021
I have spatial sequence synesthesia and none of the other named kinds, but I have noticed a couple of linkages that I have always thought were universal. Namely 1) mood-memory. access to memories is heavily controlled by the mood you are in now (and were at the time of the memory); and 2)smells-memories-emotions.
ReplyDeleteHi Sally! Yes, smells-memories/emotions is something experienced by everyone (although there are probably big differences between people with regard to the vividness and the extent it affects us (there's a page in the Tree with what I found out about this subject, https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/smell-and-memory-taste-and-prousts.html), and I must say I hadn't heard of moods controlling access to memories before - how fascinating! What do you experience? I don't think it would be linked to synesthesia, but I'd like to know more about it!
DeleteThanks for this chart -I have “common” and “uncommon”. I participated in a study many years ago and heard about different types of synesthesia for the first time. One type I never knew was synesthesia was one’s body becoming the shape of sound, passages of music (some of this can be movement as response to auditory, but it is also feel my body becoming the actual shape of the sound . Another-My “3” is green and-if I hold up three fingers that looks green -same for White “1” one finger”2” two fingers are brown “4” red -4 fingers are red -it goes as far as 5 for fingers.
ReplyDeleteI find what you say to be very interesting! Both those things you mention. Perceiving your body as being the shape of the sound I'd say would fit in somewhere with the proprioception-related aspect of auditory-tactile, and also, as you suggest, with auditory-motor. And seeing your fingers as the colours of your numbers, I don't remember hearing of a case of this before and it's such a good example of how magnitude or numerosity and not just the symbol for the number produce the colour. Looking this up now I can see that there's actually a study on this (Ward/Sagiv), from 2007 (or was that actually the study you took part in?), this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6270038_Synaesthesia_for_Finger_Counting_and_Dice_Patterns_A_Case_of_Higher_Synaesthesia
DeleteIn any case I'd like to include both the things you say in my descriptions here on the Tree, if that's OK by you!
I can smell temperature, see sound, and see colors in numbers. the 2 latter ones are listed, but olfactory-temperature is not. I can explain more if you're curious!
ReplyDeleteThat would be interesting to hear about your experiences, yes!
ReplyDeleteI have a few types, but one I never seem to see mentioned anywhere is that, for me, words have textures. Thinking of the right word often leads to comments like ‘no that word is too furry’ or ‘no the word I’m trying to think of is spikier than that’ (much to the confusion of those around me). Sometimes it’s just an association, sometimes I can actually feel the texture as if I’m touching a surface or something.
ReplyDeleteIs there a term for that sort of word-texture synesthesia?
Hi! You’re right, I think in many cases this could definitely be considered a type of synesthesia… but no-one seems to talk about it much, as far as I know there aren’t any studies on it, and it hasn’t been given a name. I’d only really heard it talked about in conjunction with grapheme-colour synesthesia. But if the textures don’t have colour, then it would be different from grapheme-colour. Or with lexical-gustatory, when words not only have a taste but it’s also common for there to be a texture.
DeleteWith synesthesia types where a strong perception of texture is the concurrent, it often appears to be the case that the textures are perceived together with something else: colour, shape, taste (or mouthfeel), or touch. That tends to the case for sound-texture synesthesia, for example, and it seems to be equally true when it’s a concurrent for words, although of course the texture could just occur on its own. In your case, from what you say, you seem to have it either alone or with a tactile sensation. A hypothetical name for it if it comes with real touch sensations would be lexical-tactile synesthesia, or if not you could say word-texture.
I think your question makes an interesting point, and it could be worth making a page for the Tree of this when I have time!
You could look at the pages on sound-texture and musical note texture if you were interested because you might see some kind of a relationship with how you’re perceiving your textures with words.
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/sound-texture-synesthesia.html
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/05/tone-texture-synesthesia-musical-note.html
And looking for some more examples of it, I found this excellent post in Reddit with some very interesting comments, all talking about how they experience word-texture, you might like to read it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Synesthesia/comments/8mvhb8/feeling_words_and_sentences_as_texturesfabrics/
There seem to be a small but strong number of synesthetes who have this, maybe it needs revindicating!
Mine isn't very interesting. The only one I can truly say I experience is the one a lot of people refer to as "ASMR".
ReplyDeleteI first remember feeling it sometime around 4th-6th grade, but for me, while it CAN and often is related to hearing a sound--for me, it happens when I hear what sounds like someone drawing with markers or colored pencils--it still mostly occurs when someone is doing something for me that has to do with art or writing on paper.
That may sound confusing so I'll try to quickly explain via an example or two.
In 6th grade, I clearly remember, if a classmate would ask to borrow my notes, I would get a tingly sensation throughout my body (usually starting in the head) for the entire time they were copying my notes, albeit more like in waves rather than continuously.
A second instance I clearly remember is when one of my friends would be drawing a picture for me (my friends and I did this during class for some reason). Whether or not I could hear the markers they were using didn't matter except perhaps it heightened the feeling a little bit.
That's about it for me. I remember feeling weird about it, but not enough to concern me, although when I finally learned about "ASMR" (and then finally auditory-tactile synesthesia...although the "auditory" part may be a very slight misnomer for my particular...variant) it made me feel less weird to learn others experienced it too.