Also called letter form synesthesia
A type of spatial sequence synesthesia
Image: Brad Pettengill, in his blog. 2014
Synesthetes with this type of synesthesia perceive the alphabet represented spatially, around them or in front of them. The letters are located consistently and the pattern never changes. Normally, each letter also has its own colour (when this is the case, alphabet-form coexists with grapheme-colour synesthesia) and they sometimes have a particular texture. There do not appear to be any studies clarifying what percentage of synesthetes have this particular subtype of spatial sequence synesthesia, but it seems to be fairly rare. It is much more common to have the kinds where the elements visualised are time units (days, months, years, etc.) or numbers. Alphabet-form can coexist with one or more of these other types, or it may be the only spatial sequence type the synesthete has.
Image: Brad Pettengill, in his blog. 2014
Here are some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:
"For me [the letters] are in a sort of sporadic lineup starting from around level with my left eye to awkwardly far past my right ear. They’re not in line with each other, nor are they the same size or colour. They do tend to get smaller and less significant the further into the alphabet you go.
I don’t actually physically see them in front of me though. Just in my minds eye."
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
“I have spatial sequence, number form, alphabet form etc, all rolled into one; and they're all colour-coded and laid out on the same 3D plane. The calendar's on the left and I can zoom in and out of different layers, the numbers go ahead to the right of it and the alphabet goes from the middle and off right."
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
Go to the page on spatial sequence synesthesia in general
Go to the page on number form synesthesia
This page last updated: 27 December 2021
I used to do graphical design for a student organisation during my studies. I had to design an annual report and it included a page with all the events of the year. Easy-peasy, I simply drew the calendar wheel and positioned the events on it in a chronological order. That's how I found out that my brain must function differently from the others. They liked the "original" idea that the information was presented in a circular form, but there was no way they could agree with it flowing counter clockwise. Neither starting from the middle of the page. I had to give in and I still remember the pain I felt when redesigning it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I stared my fourth year in the university I decided not to buy a physical calendar notebook. All the previous ones laid unused in my drawer. Only after I started working and was forced to use the company's online calendar I begun to wonder how did I manage to remember all my homework, meetings etc without ever writing it down. Unfortunately I lost this ability when I started using Google calendar on my phone for personal stuff.
I'm married to a psychologist now. Thanks to her I found out that sliding a timeline of everything in front of your eyes is not what everyone does. Also having all the numbers neatly organised in a sequence with specific folds and bends is not too common. She told me that this ability is called synesthesia. By getting to know this term I ended up on this website.
But I was today years old when I found out that alphabet form synesthesia is fairly rare. I assumed that math and numbers are often hard to manage for many people, so that's why they don't have this ability. But letters are so common that everyone must have some sort of a system in their head. Now I have spent the entire evening trying to imagine how a person can memorize the alphabet if they don't visualize it as a sequence. My brain simply can't understand it. Especially how would someone know which letters are next to each other and how would you know that there are two letters between K and N?