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Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

matthewjamestaylor.com

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Re: Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

#3
I am not a synaesthete and I wonder how other non-synaesthetes perceived the '5 vs 2' diagram. Even though I see all the digits in plain black, the triangle of 2s immediately stood out to me. The author writes:

'For me, four-leaf clovers are a different shape so they stand out in a clover patch very much like this. Unlike letters and numbers, however, I don't get a sense of color, it's more like a sense of movement.'

But even as a non-synesthete, I felt a sense of movement in the 2s, as if they were little swans swimming against the bevy of 5s. But I felt no such movement when looking at the photographs of clovers. I could only spot a few four-leaf clovers at a quick glance because the pale markings on them form a rough quadrilateral, so I was essentially spotting those shapes rather than the four leaflets themselves.

If this sort of topic interests you, I wrote an article earlier this year about number–colour–phoneme associations: https://susam.net/assoc.html

As I mentioned, I do not have synaesthesia, yet the associations between numbers, colours and phonemes are quite strong in my mind due to early exposure to CGA colours and mnemonic systems. For instance, I find it hard to think of the number 1 without thinking of blue or the phonemes /t/ and /d/, or to think of 4 without thinking of red or /r/. I have written more about it in the article linked above.

Re: Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

#5
>> I have several hundred [four leaf clovers]. I even have a few five-leaf clovers and a couple of sixers!

That doesn't fit the ratios in my experience.. I find about 1 five-leaf for every 5 four-leafers. They should have nearly 100 five leafers, not merely "a few".

EDIT: I checked and indeed the standard ratio is 4.8 four leaf clovers per five-leaf. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/73279/distributi...

Re: Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

#6
I, too, experience some synethesia with letters and numbers (two is green, three is yellow, 4 is blue), but when I look at a field of clover, I don't experience a field of numbers representing the number of leaves on the individual clover stalks. In fact that seems like a weird way of perceiving nature. When I see a bird flying with its two wings outstretched, I'm not experiencing the number 2, and thus I get no sense of green.

Re: Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

#7
post #5

>> I have several hundred [four leaf clovers]. I even have a few five-leaf clovers and a couple of sixers! That doesn't fit the ratios in my experience.. I find about 1 five-leaf for every 5 four-leafers. They should have nearly 100 five leafers, not merely "a few". EDIT: I checked and indeed the standard ratio is 4.8 four leaf clovers per five-leaf. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/73279/distributi...

I don't think they are uniformly distributed. Anecdotally, in my friend's backyard, the ratios I found were more like

    10000 three-leaf
    15 four-leaf
    7 five-leaf
    4 six-leaf
    2 seven-leaf
I would assume that the ratios in any given area can be quite different than another area.

Re: Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)

#8
Interesting. Another thing I have that I didn't know about. I've found over 500 four leaf clovers as a kid. I still find them without looking as an adult when looking at something else on the ground or tying my shoe, etc. The movement thing isn't exactly like how I would describe it, but pretty close. It's almost like the eye auto focuses on it becuase it's different. Sometimes I would intentionally unfocus my eyes or concentrate on peripheral vision to make them jump out.
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