Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Lexical-Gustatory Synaesthesia

I read an interesting post in one of the science blogs I've been reading lately, on lexical-gustatory synaesthesia, which I guess is common enough to have a line of research surrounding it.

The more traditional form of synaesthesia finds people tasting or smelling colors or something like that...in this model, (ready for it?)
people taste PHONEMES. Like people associate the phoneme /k/ with cake, or /edg/ (e.g. college) with sausage (sauce-edge).

Maybe dyslexic individuals lack sufficient phonological awareness because certain phonemes make them taste asparagus or coconut or limberger cheese, or something. That'd be enough to make me hate phonemes.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/student_report_all_i_want_for.php

So maybe we should drop the line of research surrounding reading remediation, and just feed these kids better tasting foods.

No comments: