#ordinal linguistic personification

[marzipanandminutiae]

I don't know if this counts as synthesia but I do have a lot of opinions on what numbers and letters personalities and lives are like.

For instance: 7 is 4's big brother, a kind of party going friend and just in general a fun-loving friend.

congrats that is indeed synesthesia

honestly a lot of the notes on that post are like "same" and I'm not surprised. synesthesia and neurodivergence seem to have high rates of co-occurrence, it seems, and this is indeed the Neurodivergent Webbed Site. personally I'm allistic, but I have Tourette Syndrome. and that, too, is the Neuros Diverging

my 7 is also male and protective of 4 (EVERYONE is protective of 4) but more of like...a young wizard's apprentice

[clay-pidgeon]

we have ordinal linguistic personification synesthesia and we were confused by 3 not being a boy or a girl like. nearly a decade before we knew about nonbinary people

[ndb-123]

I answered a poll about ordinal linguistic personification (a form of synesthesia that I have) and started thinking about the emotions and personalities I associate with/assign to certain letters and numbers, and now I can't read a sentence without making the associations. (For example, "e" is happy in most words, "a" is more mature than "e", and I associate "r" and "g" with certain personalities but I can't find the words to describe them right now.)

(Writing this without getting distracted trying to make associations was so difficult)

I've always had ordinal linguistic personification, but only recently learned the name for it. I always thought it was just my overactive imagination.

[singingkestrel]

Roar.

Even the littlest machine can have a mighty roar.

Though actually when I look at this I hear the belting 'MAMA!!!' bit from Bohemian Rhapsody.

Is this what having synesthesia is like?

[mewos-laptop]

Ordinal linguistic personification is smth I've learned abt semi-recently and it fucking blows my mind that it's not like... smth that everyone does ???

Like are y'all telling me that you didn't accidentally form personalities for numbers bc you kept noticing patterns in equations ?????

Like it was an involuntary thing for me, but it DID form bc of the influence of equations and shit. Like 4 6 and 8 are in a love triangle bc of different equations that involves them. 6 and 8 have like... a hate-equation relationship w/ each other but tbh they don't hate each other as much as they say they do.

Uhhhh anyways 3 and 9 are my favorite characters they're very sibling coded.

[palisadewasp]

that 789 post reminded me that i have synesthesia. someone pleas go into my ask box and ask about numbers 0-10

[vhstown]

this is actually so random but does anyone have this thing where numbers have personalities and ages and genders and appearances like characters in their head... like 7 is a lanky dude with a stubble that wears a striped beanie to me... no... please any1

[vimbry]

an unintended discovery I've had learning how to play an instrument is that my personification synesthesia extends to music. I kinda realised that I've been thinking of the scales when I practice them like this (based on their sounds, not names):

C: the top dog but not cocky about it. the eldest, mild in temperment, but kind of aloof and rarely spoken to candidly

D: fun-loving yet responsible, sort of avuncular. the party animal of the outfit

E: smug and far from modest, a teacher's pet

F: a little meek and tends to feel unnoticed

G: sort of a neutral personality to this one, they just get the job done, if that makes sense (none of this makes sense)

A: a loner from the others, but self-assured and happy about that. a weird kid who breaks away the pack

B: they're hard to understand and get through to. also separate from the rest, but in a more ostracised way than A

[none-sex-left-gay]

Hyperspecific poll based on oddities about me!

[efingart]

If you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog! (no pressure!🎀) 🌸

Why are these always so hard? 😅

Uhhhhhh

My favorite video game series of all time is actually The Legend of Zelda. (Did you all think it was CoD?) I've played almost all of them. The only ones I'm missing are Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks and A Link Between Worlds. My favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

I have Ordinal linguistic personification and grapheme–color synesthesia. It was a lot stronger when I was a kid, but I associate personalities and colors with certain letters and numbers. I actually used to dislike the letter E because she was very assertive almost. a bully. (E is green)

I really love pineapple on pizza. My go-to pizza order is pineapple and black olives (sweet & salty). I didn't realize it was also Deadpool's pizza order (not burnt though) until the movie came out. Though I don't care to enter the debate, I'm from Chicago, I've heard it all already.

So total weirdo! Checks out!

[marzipanandminutiae]

top five numbers

Good Good Question for someone with ordinal-linguistic personification.

3. 3 is a young GNC woman who's kind of a daredevil. Probably quite emotionally vulnerable but uses a mask of cockiness to hide it.

4. Oh, sweet 4. You beautiful Disney Princess waif. 4 just wants to sing in the woods with all of her animal friends, and she gives new meaning to the term "naive." That asshole 5 is always creeping on her, and while he makes her uncomfortable, she worries about how best to refuse him without being Impolite. I think 3 is quite protective of her. Maybe they're a couple? I go back and forth on that one.

2. 2 is an upper-class but nouveau riche British woman c. 1955 who survived the Blitz and now wears Dior every day. She is middle-aged and also very protective of- but very exasperated by -4.

8. 8 amuses me. He's such a would-be tyrant, but nobody ever listens to him. Sound and fury signifying nothing. A man on the cusp of being elderly. Maybe British, maybe a Boston Brahmin of the old school.

9. 9 is the plucky farm lad who just received The Call to save his [kingdom/star system/whatever]. He's a bit bookish, very earnest, and may or may not have magical powers. I feel like he, 3, and 4 would make an excellent adventuring team in a fantasy story.

[horsesource]

“The intensity of this sort of anthropomorphism [like ‘ordinal linguistic personification’] may thus result, in part, from becoming perceptually glued to things that a person would otherwise deem, in a typical ‘topology of salience,’ to be unworthy of sustained attention. If you look long enough at a chair or a light fixture or a lamppost, how can it not appear to be a social partner? (Mother fork, grandmother fork, ex-father fork …)”

[augmentedpolls]

More information about the types here ^^^

[st5lker]

everyone has grapheme-color synesthesia we're over it but

and PLEASE explain why in the tags

[hannah-hunt-2319]

Why do I hear colors? The neuroscience explanation

Growing up, I listened to a lot of classical music. While some people found the genre to be generally boring and thought that all of the pieces sounded alike, I experienced each piece not only aurally, but visually. Each piece had a distinct color pallet, with colors flowing into each other like watercolor paint as motifs changed or different instruments were introduced. I never thought that it was anything out of the ordinary. I would describe pieces that “sounded” lavender and navy blue with hints of gold as if it was common sense, only to be met by confused expressions. I didn’t understand. Doesn’t everyone “see” music? That’s when I learned about a condition called “synesthesia.” 

Synesthesia is an umbrella term for conditions in which the stimulation of one of the senses, the “inducer,” is linked with the perception of a typically “unrelated” sense, the concurrent. Thus, while taste and smell are normally processed together to perceive flavors, it is much rarer to perceive words with specific flavors, which is why lexical-gustatory (LG) synesthesia is considered a neurological condition. [Ipser, Ward, and Simner, 2020] Some forms of synesthesia, such as LG, are more rare than others. The type that I previously described is called chromesthesia, or more commonly, colored hearing. Typically, this involves the visualization of associated colors in the “mind’s eye,” but some people with the condition do see colors projected out in front of them. [Carpenter, 2001.] There is also grapheme-color synesthesia, in which letters, numbers, or words have specific colors associated with them, and ordinal linguistic personification, in which “listed” items, such as letters, numbers, days of the week, or months, have distinct personalities. These conditions might explain why I feel so strongly that my name is purple as opposed to orange and why the number “3” has always been green and a boy. But what causes these interesting sensory associations? 

While the mechanism of synesthesia is not very well understood, there are several pieces of evidence that suggest a neural basis for the condition: consistency of sensory associations (e.g. a song consistently induces the same color perception), potential acquisition during neurological illness, differences in cerabral blood flow, and familial cocurrence. [Schiltz, et. al, 1999] The genetic basis of synesthesia still requires more research to be well understood, studies suggest that it is heritable and that the phenomenon is heterogenous and polygenetic. [Brang and Ramachandran, 2011] This would explain why my dad and bother also have strong opinions regarding the color of songs that often result in lively discussions over how well our interpretations “make sense” to each other. 

Several theories have been proposed as to the mechanism of synesthesia, most of which are backed by studies on grapheme-color synesthesia. One of the most supported theories is the cross-activation mechanism, which suggests that grapheme color synesthesia is caused by the retention of neuronal connections between the visual word form area of the brain (an inferior temporal region) and the color-processing region (hV4). This model may partially explain the genetic component of synesthesia. Another theory is the disinibited feedback mechanism, in which there is unusual feedback from the temporo-parietal-occipital junction or another “multisensory nexus,” which is often supported by evidence of drug-induced synesthetic experiences rather than congenital synesthetic experiences. The theory of “re-enterant processing” is a hybrid of both of the previously mentioned theories. Lastly, one of the newer theories regarding the mechanism of synesthesia is the “hyperbinding” model, which states that the overactivation of parietal mechanisms responsible for “binding” sensory information into a holistic representation of the world may be present in synesthetes. [Hubbard, 2007] 

One study, with supporting evidence found from other literature, found that there was increased gray matter in the superior posterior parietal lobe in grapheme-color synesthetes compared to non-synesthetes. [Rouw and Scholte, 2010] Since the superior posterior parietal lobe is involved in integrating sensory information, so the increased number of neurons found in synesthetes would likely account for the increased likelihood of inter-sensory connections. They also found that projection perception of color is associated with increased activation of the visual, auditory, and motor cortexes, which are responsible for piercieving the outside world, while the mental perception of color is associated with increased activation of the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, which are more involved in memory. The authors state that their findings are most consistent with a combination of the cross-activation model and hyperbinding in the superior parietal cortex. Another study used behavioral and neuroimaging techniques on grapheme-color synesthetes and found that the perception synthetic colors likely originates from increased hV4 activation, which also aligns with the cross-activation model. [Hubbard, et. al, 2005] 

While qualitative records of synesthesia have been discussed for over one hundred years (at least), it’s very interesting to analyze some of the more recent quantitative methods used to analyze how synesthesia works. The use of imaging techniques, such as MRI and fMRI, creates some compelling evidence as to how synesthesia-based sensory perception occurs, however, it’s hard to fully understand how it works considering that many studies are statistically inconclusive. Additionally, while primarily studying grapheme-color synesthesia makes sense considering it’s the most common form of synesthesia, more studies with more rigorous methodology are required to better understand some of the more complex and rarer forms of synesthesia. Regardless, it’s reassuring to have more scientific evidence explaining to others why the Habanera “sounds” red to me.

[technovillain]

I have a synesthesia experience that feels relatively unique in that I don't see it frequently discussed but I wanted to share it in case someone else could relate. So as well as Chromesthesia I have Ordinal-linguistic personification, which in my case means that the number sequence 1-9 came with distinct personalities, genders, and colors. There were distinct relationships between each of the number "characters".

This was something I can remember as early as I started playing around with math. I have distinct memories of myself in preschool going through each number and focusing on what each one was like. When I was learning basic math in preschool, the establishment of the relationships between these number "characters" helped me to remember the answer of questions. Each basic one-digit plus one-digit equation makes perfect sense to me in terms of how the colors and relationships line up, but they don't do well to be explained out loud to others...I've tried and it doesn't make much sense to anyone else. This formula worked the best in my mind with addition.

I didn't have to think about them actively again until third grade, when we locked down on learning the multiplication tables. It was applying a whole new idea to the same single digit number "characters". So my understanding of each character and their relationships to one another grew as I learned how to apply multiplication to them. It did not work so well for division, though.

My brain has always worked almost purely in terms of addition and multiplication, with some simple subtraction thrown in. Which is something I've heard is common for dyscalculia. I always see synesthesia used in a positive light exclusively, but in the case of my OLP, it made math significantly more difficult. The second that math classes moved on to things beyond multiplication tables and basic long division, I felt completely lost. I felt like I didn't absorb a single thing in a math class after those topics, because the more theoretical and complicated equations or expressions did not line up to my understanding of the numbers. And being that I am not in control of how my OLP works, it was extremely difficult for me to get through those math classes because it felt like I could not relate the numbers to anything anymore. It made me feel genuinely dumb, and I feel like it's an overlap of synesthesia, ADHD, and possible dyscalculia.