Not all of us experience the world in the same way. Most people see the letters that make up words as only the colours they are printed in, but about 1-2% of the population has some experience of colour when they encounter letters.
This is an unusual form of perception known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia, which Marcus Watson and Jim Enns have been studying at the Vision Lab for several years. Our studies investigate how grapheme-colour synaesthesia develops, the factors that determine the specific colours that are associated with specific letters, the timing of neural activity associated with synaesthetic experiences, the utility of synaesthesia for learning tasks, and the conscious status of synaesthetic experiences. Two recent publications can be found here and here.
We are always on the lookout for new participants in our experiments, which range between half an hour to two hours. We pay a small fee ($10/hour), and are happy to discuss any of our research. If you are interested in participating, please don’t hesitate to contact us at