Professor Amy Finn recently spoke to the BBC about how people with certain types of synaesthesia can learn languages more easily.
Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon that causes approximately 4.4% of people to experience the world as a variety of sensations. For people with specific variants of synaesthesia, words can stimulate taste or a sound may be ‘seen’ as a specific colour. Around 60 different types of synaesthesia have been identified, but some estimate that there could be more than 100.
It is thought to be caused by genetically inherited traits that shape the structural and functional development of the brain.
A 2019 study conducted by psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley found that grapheme-colour synaesthesia provides a significant advantage in statistical learning. People with this type of synaesthesia find that letters and numbers have their own distinct colours. Effectively, they can “see” patterns, which is crucial in language learning.
“[The study] was constructed to look at 'segmentation' – or how you use regularities to pull out what the segments of language even are. This is a very early but super important problem in early language learning,” says Finn. "We think [synaesthesia] can help you parse the chunks of language more easily."