Living with synaesthesia - Unit 3

C1 Advanced · Multiple Choice Reading · Complete Advanced, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read an article about a person who has a condition called synaesthesia. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Saturdays are yellow, and Thursdays are dark blue; that’s always been so apparent to me that, for most of my life, I didn’t think it was even worth making a point of mentioning it. I also didn’t consider it unusual to imagine that the word ‘courage’ had a texture like iron, and ‘wisdom’ was purple in colour. It’s not that I thought everyone else saw Thursdays as specifically blue; I just thought everyone processed information in that way. It wasn’t until university that it began to dawn on me that that was far from the case, when I spotted a poster asking: ‘What colour is Monday? If you can answer that question, you might have synaesthesia,’ with an invitation to participate in a neurological study. I stared at the poster, then messaged a friend, asking her the same question. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. In fact, sources suggest that approximately 2–4% of people are thought to have the condition. However, when I asked on social media for any fellow synaesthetes to contact me, a surprising number of people began sharing similar experiences. One person first had suspicions as a child when he understood things differently from other people when explaining to his initially slightly puzzled parents that because green was his favourite colour, it followed that seven must be his favourite number – because it was also green. He now finds it relatively easy to remember things like phone numbers, but runs into issues if the ‘real life’ number on something such as a sign has its own colour that’s in conflict with the colour in his head. As for prose, it’s a multi-coloured thing for him, with literary features – such as the same sounds being used at the beginnings of a string of words, or neighbouring syllables with the same sounds – leaping out as being all the same colour, to the extent that they may even present a distraction at times. While the effects of synaesthesia are becoming well documented, its origins remain obscure. The brain regions responsible for processing language and colours may have accidentally grown too close in the womb, allowing connections between each other, a possibility that could explain why grapheme-colour synaesthesia – the association between colours and words, like knowing that Thursdays are blue – is the most common form. In fact, brain scans show there’s activity in both regions when synaesthetes hear words. It’s an explanation people with the condition may feel drawn to, as is another possibility that’s been proposed, which goes by the catchy name of ‘disinhibited feedback’. Decisions are constantly being made by our brains about which type of information is important and which can be selectively ignored – otherwise we’d be too distracted by what’s going on around us to properly function. And that includes any associations we might have made about the information. For example, when meeting someone for the first time, we might make associations based on information such as someone we know who resembles them or the colour of their clothes that strikes us. However, in order to keep functioning normally, we shut down most of those associations without attending to them – inhibiting our feedback, in other words. Synaesthesia is an example of what occurs when that shutdown doesn’t happen. For many synaesthetes, this can actually help rather than negatively affect them. I remember spellings of words after only seeing them once because they immediately have powerful colour combinations I can’t forget. Similarly, I remember long strings of unconnected numbers fairly easily because of their colours – despite my maths skills leaving much to be desired. And if, as some of us do, you effectively see dates, numbers and time in 3D, diaries become almost unnecessary. In fact, one feature that certain extremely gifted mathematicians may share is that they also have synaesthesia – a particular subset of the condition which allows them to do seemingly impossible calculations at lightning speed. They perceive numbers as shapes, which then come together and morph into other complex combinations that somehow give them the answers. Synaesthetes can also experience a mixture of more than one subset. There’s ‘lexical-gustatory synaesthesia’, for instance, where words have tastes, or ‘ordinal-linguistic personification,’ where letters have personalities. However, for non-synaesthetes vaguely wishing they had the condition, it seems you can trick your brain into developing similar skills by forcing yourself to always picture words beginning with T as red, for instance. Meanwhile, a small percentage of us will continue to avoid numbers with particular personalities and notice letters jumping off the page in vivid colours. It might sound extraordinary to the majority of the population, but for people like me who know the number four is aquamarine and has an easy-going personality, it’s a life-enhancing kind of gift.

She was puzzled by the associations the condition presented her with.

She assumed her perceptions were identical to other people’s.

She was largely unaware of its existence for some time.

She felt it enriched her impressions of words she came across.

What does the writer say about her attitude to synaesthesia?

can have drawbacks in certain situations.

enhances his appreciation of written language.

is responsible for his level of creativity.

has given his family considerable cause for concern.

One fellow synaesthete on social media suggested that the condition

summarising results of research into the cause of the condition

putting forward conflicting views of the cause of the condition

outlining the recent expansion of research into the condition

examining appealing theories that could account for the condition

What is the writer doing in the third paragraph?

She envies other people’s maths skills.

She’s worked hard to improve her maths skills.

She feels the level of her maths skills is inadequate.

She realises her maths skills are rather unconventional.

What does the writer imply about her maths skills by referring to them as ‘leaving much to be desired’?

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

More C1 Advanced Multiple Choice Reading practice · All C1 Advanced practice