TABLE OF CONTENTS
Technological Roots of SynesthEasy
The Motivation Behind SynesthEasy
The Science Behind SynesthEasy
Our product aims to transform the way people learn. Learning should not stop at just reading and writing. Our machine provides an engaging learning experience by immersing the learners in a virtual reality. This virtual reality is created by employing all the five senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing, and speech. With a monitor screen for sight, a built-in audio device for sound, a small spray-like gadget for smell, an electrode placed inside the helmet for taste and gloves for touch, our device is undoubtedly a huge step forward in providing an unconventional form of learning.
Our machine is inspired by the condition synesthesia, in which an external stimulus creates a unique subjective experience for the synesthete. In more scientific terms, synesthesia is a condition in which “input from a certain modality induces an experience (i.e. the ‘concurrent’) in another modality or along another dimension of the same modality, which is not normally triggered by the inducer” (Colizoli 1). Although synesthesia comes in many forms, the most common type of synesthesia is the grapheme-color synesthesia in which a person experiences colors when viewing or hearing letters (Radvansky 219). Other forms of synesthesia include:
- Sound-to-color synesthesia – In this form, a person experiences color in his mind when hearing sounds as simple as a car horn (Pressman).
- Lexical-gustatory – As the word explains, it is a rarely found condition in which seeing or hearing words produce distinctive tastes in a person’s mouth (Pressman).
- Mirror-touch synesthesia – This is a strange form of synesthesia in which physically touching another person allows the synesthete to experience the same sensations (Pressman).
- Ordinal-linguistic personification – The synesthete associates personality traits to letters (Pressman).
- Auditory-tactile – In this form, a person experiences different sensations in the body when hearing sounds (Pressman).
- Number forms – A person views numbers in different shapes that connect together (Pressman).
- Chromesthesia – In this interesting form of synesthesia, a person experiences colors in the form of words and numbers (“chromesthesia”).
- Spatial Sequence Synesthesia – Synesthetes with this type of synesthesia view numbers as different points in space (Edwards).
A perfect demonstration and explanation of synesthesia is provided by an enlightening TED talk as well.
Synesthetes (people with synesthesia) tend to have a better memory than non-synesthetes because of their enhanced capability of perceiving and remembering color (Yaro and Ward 691). As a result, synesthetes perform greater on perceptual crowding tasks, which involves the detrimental effect of neighboring elements while focusing on a particular element (Levi 635). This is because the synesthetic colors emphasize the target element from the rest of the distraction (Colizoli 2). People with synesthesia also have better retention than others (Yaro and Ward 692). Such enhanced memory is a result of synesthetes concentrating more on item-specific processing (the recognition of distinct features of each item, in the synaesthetes’ case, color) rather than relational processing (recalling of items based on their common features) (Radvansky 221). Furthermore, the superior memory of synesthetes can also be explained by the dual-coding theory of memory. According to this theory, memory performance for verbal information is augmented when it is also “encoded as a mental image” (Yaro and Ward 683). Such encoding renders a more resilient and powerful memory as multiple memory systems are created in the brain (Yaro and Ward 683).
Moreover, it is possible to teach people to view the world like synesthetes. The traditional view was that synesthesia is fixed and genetically inherited (Colizoli 1). Studies have shown that synesthetes have differences in their brain structure that would explain their enhanced perception and memory (Colizoli 8). However, elements of synesthesia such as associations of shape and color tend to manifest in early development of infants (Colizoli 1). Moreover, the human brain is certainly resilient in that it is possible to increase connectivity through learning and practicing of synesthetic traits, producing structural and functional changes in the brain (Colizoli 8). So, it is possible that consistent exposure to elements of synesthesia as a tool of learning could result in a synesthete-like memory in children (Colizoli 1). Therefore, SynesthEasy aims to create a conducive learning experience based on synesthesia to affect better learning and superior memory in learners.
Technological Roots of SynesthEasy
Perhaps the closest thing to our device that is already in circulation is the OculusRift.
This gaming peripheral utilizes sound and sight to a much greater degree than other gaming machines because it blocks out the surrounding world when users strap the goggle-like device to their head. Because the Oculus is concerned only with gaming, its immersion is focused solely on fear as there are more and more horror games being released according to Halley-Prinable, an avid programmer who works with C++ to code video games. He claims that “of all the emotional states that immersive interactive experiences can put one through, fear is the most synonymous with the medium” (7).
While our machine does take a lot of inspiration from the Oculus Rift technology-wise, our machine’s goal is rooted in education and will be enriching all the senses for more productive purposes rather than generating a few, cheap scares. That being said, we do not expect great competition from the Oculus Rift as its target audience will be separate from ours.It would also be beneficial if the technology could gauge for each of its users the functions they need and work as Lev Manovich says that “interactive computer installations use information about the user’s body movements to generate sounds, shapes, and images, or to control the behavior of artificial creatures” (37)
Although the concept of Oculus Rift may have fueled our project, we know of other virtual reality systems that exist. Sartain, a freelance journalist researching different forms of virtual reality, outlines a number of different technologies that have come close to creating the perfect virtual reality worlds.
Mechdyne, for example, is a large room that uses advanced 3D graphics to simulate unworldly experiences. In a similar sense, we want to immerse the user in a virtual world that they can walk and interact in. The way the projections in the room adapt and change are what we want to emulate in our helmet’s built-in screen. The images should change based on the positioning of the user. Innovega iOptik is essentially a contact lens that
aims to give live feed information. The minds behind the invention plan to apply it for military usage. Though we believe that contact lenses can be cumbersome and off putting to customers, we do like the idea of a live newsfeed. The helmet will not be broadcasting news persay, but we do want an HUD (Heads Up Display) that can critique the user during the process of using the device realtime. This special HUD menu acting as a personal tech help center if the user has questions will be voice activated by the user’s choice of word (the user may choose “help” as their key word to bring up this menu). The VirtuSphere is quite close to our project. It has the standard goggles like the Oculus Rift but also enables the user free movement. The user is put inside of a ball that keeps rotating. Conceptually, it is very similar to a hamster wheel. This allows the user to endlessly roam in virtual space. Our machine has no outside peripheral to aid in free exploration. However, being fully immersed in the virtual world, it can be easy for the user to bump into walls or be confined by the real world environment, and we want to address this. Instead of having a ball, our helmet will simply warn the user when they get too close to an object or wall. These small sensors will be placed outside of the helmet to ensure safety and the screen will display a small meter that fills up as the user gets too close to an object. We can learn a lot from these already existing technologies and acknowledge the attempts at creating a perfect virtual world from others. Still, we believe our project can offer much more by focusing on educational benefits as opposed to entertainment as well as its ability to tap into all five senses.
Our device, made up of a helmet that encompasses one’s entire head, mechanized gloves and intelligently reactive boots, is manufactured to simulate many forms of beneficial synaesthesia. With all these different pieces combined, the device makes it simple and easy to go through with any and all synaesthesia simulations. We expect that the Grapheme-color app will be most popular, as this type of synaesthesia is also most common and most applicable to basic learning purposes. The rate at which one’s brain adapts and takes hold of a certain form of synaesthesia varies from case to case, just like how one would expect the way in which synaesthetes experience their individual conditions to differ.
Moreover, our products also implements another technology – an electrode that produces the taste of bitter, sweet, salty and sour. This technology is fairly new and was invented by Nimesha Ranasinghe and his team at the National University of Singapore (Marks). The tastes are transmitted by the aforementioned electrode touching the tip of the tongue (Marks). The taste receptors are deceived by varying alternating currents and modulation of temperature manipulated by semiconductor elements which heat and cool rapidly (Marks).
For our scent gadget, we were inspired by the Japanese company Scentee that recently invented a spherical attachment for the iPhone that diffuses different kinds of odors (Singh). We included a similar attachment to the inside of our helmet.
The Motivation Behind SynesthEasy
As we formed our idea for the project we wanted to establish a machine that could revolutionize the way people learn. Our group knew that some preferred alternatives to the traditional learning process in which students are simply lectured by teachers or told to extract information from a book. We figured that a more engaging device was needed. There are several machines that acted as forerunners to our project in that they attempted to extend the user’s experience. In the reading and writing sphere, audiobooks utilized hearing to help aid people in their readings. As Mediatore, a professional librarian specializing in reading trends, explains, audiobooks do not attempt to replace the reader but act “rather as a supplement to visual, text based reading” (1). In a similar fashion, our machine strives to help people learn in a new way.
The Science Behind SynesthEasy
To ensure that our machine is truly enhancing to the user’s experience, it is important to look at the neurological effects of our virtual reality system. Before exploring the effects of our device, it is important to define virtual reality. Velmans, a professor at the University of London working in the Department of Psychology, describes virtual reality as “the formation of neural representations along with neural causes and correlates of conscious experience in the subject’s brain” (3). He further explains that in a virtual reality, people are not actually in a different state or in a new location. However, their perceptions from their brains become extensions which he dubs “perceptual projections” (3). According to Velmans the virtual reality is only as real as our brains make it. Some people may be quick to denounce our machine as not being convincing enough in virtual space. The truth is that because our device triggers all five senses, the brain will be unable to tell the difference. Every sense is nothing more than mere neurological messages sent from our brain. Velmans explains that, for instance, sound is just vibrations in the air that our ears capture and get translated by the brain. While different body parts are responsible for picking up these messages, our brain is ultimately what makes sense of them. This means that our users’ environments do not actually have to change as long as our machine can trick their brains into thinking they are in a different place.
The product is focused towards educational purposes as it is shown that it can help with cognitive aspects of learning like: making pattern recognition, problem-solving and memory development. The education system today is limited to teaching “content rather than problems assuming that students will somehow make the leap from classroom exercises to real-world complexities by themselves” (Hayles 9). The product that we are trying to market is targeted to children, yet can be purchased by educators and parents to enhance their intellectual capacities. Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner says that the American school system is too focused on memorization of state capitals and periodic tables. Wagner goes on to say that children should be exposed to interactive learning in order to develop entrepreneurial and creative skills (Swallow) . The product will not just focus on linking senses to certain skills but will expand the neurological paths for the children making them more versatile to a more diversified perception of the world – helping them solve problems faster and with more ease. Helen Massy-Beresford, a writer at The Guardian reporting on induced synesthesia experiments around the world, explains that training people to have synesthetic symptoms enhances memory capacity when tested on a study group of young adults. Massy- Beresford goes on to mention that there may be a discrepancy to how synesthetes actually see the world but it does help to induce these effects so that people can link smells and colors with a list of words they need to remember. The article also quotes scientists who say this kind of method is beneficial for children’s development, and they are authority figures in the field so there is credibility to their opinion as it is based on extrapolation and not mere guesswork.
In addition, SynesthEasy is also catered towards people with synesthesia. Although synesthetes tend to have a better memory than others, training synesthetes could result in exceptional memory (Yaro and Ward 692).
We designed a website that would assist in promoting and selling our product. It was designed with WordPress. The tabs at the top of the webpage indicate specifically the most important sections of our project. In addition, each section summary comes with an image that illustrates it. It’s quite easy to navigate, simple to look at, and the ‘Buy Now’ option is always on every page and I think this will work really well for the target audience of parents and students.
Physical presentation
Educators that cater specifically to students with learning disabilities (LD) go to fairs and conventions about how to better teach a specific demographic. SynesthEasy will target them as its main audience because they are looking for new ways to develop a working memory (WM), as it directly relates to better ability in reading and solving mathematical problems (. At these fairs there will be representatives presenting about the product and giving demonstrations about how the device works with the use of volunteers. Besides having presentations at these fairs, the marketing department will contact school administration office specialized in LD education and schools that teach young children basic skills and conduct workshops when invited in. SynesthEasy would also want to have spokespeople and/or ambassadors for their products because it is geared for an educational purpose. These people could represent a governmental body, like Arne Duncan (U.S. Secretary of Education), and NGOs already working with the issue of learning disabilities. Having these external representatives will give credibility to SynesthEasy as a valuable asset to educational processes and SynesthEasy will benefit from the networks that will be made available by these entities.
Advertising materials
The marketing department will pursue media coverage from educational magazines on the product in order to draw the attention of parents and teachers who read them. These articles will speak favorably of the product and explain its purpose and appeal. Other physical advertising materials include pamphlets or brochures and posters to have during the conferences and to give out to schools.
Targeted digital advertising
When an internet user searches learning “disabilities + education” or “learning disabilities + technology” there would be advertising for SynesthEasy at the top of the results page. In addition, video commercials for the product would appear before the intended video that someone was searching for in relation to education and learning disabilities. It would be a filtered audience by matching the product with people’s searches in their browsers.
Targeting The Audience
The main group of individuals that must be impressed is the parents. Parents are the ones who make the decisions of their childrens lives. In order to relate best to parents, it’s important to understand a new generation of them. Millennials are becoming parents now, and like all parents there is one aspect of their life that is paramount: the safety of their child. Parents won’t agree to something that will harm their child no matter how effective it is at improving education. In the information age, Millennials understand that a big threat to the safety of their child is internet privacy. Because Synestheasy has internet connectivity, genuine and valid privacy concerns will arise. There are a couple of ways we can deal with this. First, we ensure parents that we will not sell their private information (email, purchasing habits, etc.) to other companies. Second, market research shows that parents tend to be less wary of privacy issues if offered deals. This will be most effective when selling to schools in bulk, and the savings of the schools will be passed on to the parents.
Since our product is inspired from the concept of synesthesia, it is possible that the disadvantages of synesthesia might manifest in SynesthEasy. According to Colizoli, grapheme-color synesthesia may hinder cognition, attention and arithmetic abilities in children (Colizoli 2). Therefore, in order to avoid this problem from occurring in our consumers, we will include exercises involving other types of synesthesia such as SSS that help in improving mathematical and cognitive skills.
Additionally, synesthetes experience problems with memory recall when the color in which the text is printed is incongruent with their synesthetic perception (Radvansky 220). It is possible that the adaptation of synesthesia in learners could cause similar difficulties.
Chromesthesia.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/chromesthesia>.
Colizoli, Olympia, Jaap M. J. Murre, and Romke Rouw. “Pseudo-Synesthesia through Reading Books with Colored Letters.” PLoS ONE 7.6 (2012): 1-10. PLoS ONE. PLOS, 27 June 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2014. <http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039799>.
The authors of this article are Olympia Colizoli, Jaap M.J. Murre and Romke Rouw. Colizoli is a professor of Brain and Cognition in the Department of Psychology at University of Amsterdam. Murre is also a professor of Brain and Cognition in the faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at University of Amsterdam. Rouw is also a professor of Brain and Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the same university. In this article, the authors aim to examine if it is possible to produce synesthetic-like experience of synesthetes to enhance learning. They also intend to examine the effects of learning synesthetic associations in non-synesthetes. The authors claim that synesthesia is not necessarily an innate, genetically inherited trait. Features of synesthesia are present in early toddlers and synesthesia is also influenced by environmental factors. The intended audiences of the authors are other professors of psychology and academic professionals.
The authors are more inclined towards the benefits that synesthesia provides. There is hardly any discussion on the problems that synesthesia causes such as the difficulty in identifying words with incongruent colors and the challenge to interpret the magnitude of certain numbers. The article is effective in explaining the potential benefits of learning and adapting synesthesia. However, the studies are pretty inconclusive because they don’t observe the long-term effects of induced synesthesia and if it activates the same neural connections as it does in synesthetes. The article supports our thesis as it demonstrates that it is possible to teach people to experience and learn like synesthetes. It is very relevant to our paper because it is shows possible ways of teaching synesthesia that are congruent with our product.
Cytowic, Richard E. “What Color Is Tuesday? Exploring Synesthesia – Richard E. Cytowic.” YouTube. YouTube, 10 June 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Richard Cytowic is a well-known neurologist who has written and taught about synesthesia and was trained at Duke University, London’s National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and George Washington University. The author’s thesis is that synesthesia is beneficial for memorization and already a way in which people think. The author’s intended audience includes students and individuals interested in neurobiology and synesthesia.
Cytowic’s bias is trying to educate people about synesthesia and may not be including all of his opinion on its benefits and how there may be counter-arguments to this information. The strength of this video is that it explains the content with a lot of detail, explaining it visually so that it is easy to comprehend. Another strength is that with authority he can outline the results of his research. Yet, the source is limited as it is too short for Cytowic to expand on missing pieces of the research or specific results to prove this theory. It furthers the argument made for our final project because it mentions that people are predisposed to think in this way, and having a tool to boost this ability would therefore be successful. The video is relevant because gives more insight in to how synesthesia works, thus becoming a source of inspiration for the apps for the project. Moreover, it gives insight into the human brain and how the average person would transition well into utilizing synesthetic functions to learn. However, the source is not directly related to education and may be to general to draw any strong conclusions from.
Edwards, Linn. “People Who ‘see’ Numbers Have Better Memories for Dates.” Phys.org. Phys.org, 15 Dec. 2009. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://phys.org/news180085439.html>.
Fromm, Jeff. “The Crucial Fact Most Marketers Miss About Millennials: Big Changes for Gen Y Marketing.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 23 Sept. 2014. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.
Jeff Fromm is the president of FutureCast, a firm that focuses on marketing to millennials. He has five main claims: millennials are less concerned with environmentalism after becoming parents, millennial parents are more politically diverse than ever, millennials tend to have less friends when they become parents, millennials are very concerned with privacy, and millennials spend more money when they become parents. He writes to mainly business owners and advertisers marketing to millennials. While not a millennial himself, he does have three children who are millennials, which inform his bias in the field. There is a lot of fat in this article that won’t be helpful, but the main points are incredibly useful in terms of marketing to this new generation of parents.
Hale, Joanna, Jacqueline M. Thompson, Helen M. Morgan, Marinella Cappelletti, and Roi C. Kadosh. “Better Together? The Cognitive Advantages of Synaesthesia for Time, Numbers, and Space.” Cognitive Neuropsychology 31.7-8 (2014): 545-64. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2452/doi/full/10.1080/02643294.2014.967759#.VHj7SDHF83Q>.
All of the contributors to the article come from psychology departments at American universities. The authors argue that there is a difference between the magnitude and sequence accounts of TNS (time, numbers, and space) synaesthesia, and that the difference is clarified somewhat in there experiment. It seems that their intended audience regards mostly other psychologists and psychology scholars who cannot clearly decide upon which account is more veritable in the broader scheme of synaesthetes. It seems as if the experiment was conducted with direct intentions for results, yet bias is not apparent in the paper, nor in the trials themselves. The experimenters set up multiple control groups to compare with the TNS synaesthetes which made for some interesting results and a more accurate conclusion to be drawn, yet it could have gone more in-depth with its analysis of those other test subjects (grapheme-color synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes). The information in the article provides a wealth of background information for our technical specs. section and does not refute any claims we intend to make, while instead clarifying a specific type of synaesthesia for our group.
Halley-Prinable, Adam. The Oculus Rift and Immersion through Fear. Bournemouth University, 2013. Web.
Halley-Prinable is an expert at using C++, Lua and Python. He primarily works as a game programmer but also works as a contract programmer to work on any project. In this book Halley-Prinable claims that the Oculus Rift may have a greater potential to be more immersive than a regular computer screen monitor. By attempting to quantify fear through heart rate monitors and using test subjects, he shows the extent of immersion from the Oculus Rift. The author’s intended audience is probably gamers although its research exceeds that of just gaming. It calls into question the idea of a true virtual reality and the effects that is has on people.
Being a game programmer, Halley-Prinable may be too quick to praise the Oculus Rift and want to promote the new gaming device. The strength is that the author uses a scientific approach to come up with an experiment that measures the effect of the Oculus Rift in a way that is more than pure speculation. The weakness, however, is that it emphasizes the emotion of fear while ignoring any other effect the Oculus Rift could potentially have. Another weakness is that it mostly focuses on the difference between the Oculus Rift and a normal computer screen monitor. Comparisons to other mediums of engagement are largely ignored. This book supports our theory that creating an experience that fully utilizes our sense can create a positive, immersive experience for all users. Despite the fact that the Oculus Rift only triggers the sense of sight and sound, the information provided still shows studies of levels of immersion that can help support our argument for a product rooted in the idea of synesthesia.
Hayles, Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.
Levi, Dennis M. “Crowding—An Essential Bottleneck for Object Recognition: A Mini-review.” Vision Research 48.5 (2008): 635-54. ScienceDirect. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.
Marks, Paul. “Electrode Recreates All Four Tastes on Your Tongue.” NewScientist Nov. 2013: n. pag. NewScientist. Reed Business Information Ltd., 20 Nov. 2013. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.
Massy-Beresford, Helen. “How We All Could Benefit From Synesthesia.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 26 Apr. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Helen Massy-Beresford is a freelance reporter, who writes about business, travel, lifestyle, science and technology and health. In the article How We All Could Benefit From Synesthesia, Massy-Beresford argues induced synesthesia could help with memorizing and learning information. She draws upon various compelling research results conducted across different universities and the predictions they have for the implications to further this argument. The author’s intended readers are those interested in neuroscience, health, ageing, psychology, biology and medical research, as seen through the topic tags that have been used for this article.
Massy-Beresford is not a researcher but a reporter on the findings and she seems to be fascinated by the results, which could imply that she may be overrating the possible repercussions of this research and she may not know the pitfalls of the studies. A strong factor of the article is that she draws upon quotes of authority figures in the scientific arena and explains the experimental process that the researchers went through to reach these conclusions. Although, the article falls short of proposing counter-arguments or aspects of the research that could be limited to draw any grand relationships between learning and synesthesia. Another weakness is that the article fails to demonstrate the research and the specific method that was used to conduct the experiments. This article furthers our argument that memorization can be helped by inducing synesthesia on the non-synaesthete population. Although, it focuses more heavily on the results on how it can help the elderly and it doesn’t have evidence on how it can affect child education. Nevertheless, the article does mention the possible effect and future investment on pedagogical research because of scientific belief induced synesthesia can be beneficial.
Kay, Collette L., Duncan A. Carmichael, Henry E. Ruffell, and Julia Simner. “Colour Fluctuations in Grapheme-colour Synaesthesia: The Effect of Clinical and Non-clinical Mood Changes.” British Journal of Psychology(2014): n. pag. Wiley Online Library. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2153/doi/10.1111/bjop.12102/full>.
The article’s contributors all work in Psychology departments of two Universities in the UK (University of Edinburgh and University of Sussex). The authors conducted a series of experiments testing grapheme-color synaesthetes and attempting to find a correlation between mood and the colors they experience. As it turns out, the evidence supports the claim that mood does in fact alter the colors they perceive (noted by a change in luminance). The article is intended for other scholars of psychology along with those interested in this field of research. Considering that the article is actually a publication of a science paper, the only room for bias is in the fact that it’s possible the authors drew more on correlation rather than causation, yet they do not make any claims that surpass what their evidence supports. The article offers a great deal of experimental details about grapheme-color synaesthetes, but lacks personal anecdotes or experience as it is essentially a lab report. I believe it does not deny anything our research paper intends to do, and actually extends the believability of our invention and the feasibility in many ways too. It seems relevant to our investigation considering it could provide useful information when looking at how our device could alter the moods of its users, along with their general brain functions.
Nylund, Viktor. “Marketing and Advertising to Children: The Issues at Stake.”The Guardian. UNICEF, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.
Viktor Nylund is a senior advisor of corporate social responsibility at UNICEF. His main claim is that children are much more vulnerable to marketing campaigns and that businesses need to be conscious of this idea. He also contends that children are becoming much more independent, to the point that children are becoming their own focus group, making independent purchases and having influence on purchases in the household. He mainly focuses his attention on entrepreneurs and people in the business world. As a senior advisor at UNICEF, he has a natural bias towards protecting consumers from morally questionable business practices, regardless of profits. This helps us because it reminds us that our marketing to children has to be socially conscious, and if we behave in this
Pressman, Peter. “Synesthesia.” About. About.com, 24 Nov. 2014. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://neurology.about.com/od/Symptoms/a/Synesthesia.htm>.
Radvansky, Gabriel A., Bradley S. Gibson, and M. Windy McNerney. “Synesthesia and Memory: Color Congruency, Von Restorff, and False Memory Effects.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 37.1 (2010): 219-29. PsycARTICLES. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.
The authors of this article are Gabriel A. Radvansky, Bradley S. Gibson and M. Windy McNerney. Radvansky is a professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Notre Dame. Gibson is an associate professor in the same department at University of Notre Dame. McNerny was a doctoral student under the direction of Dr. Radvansky at time of publication, but has since earned her PhD in Cognitive Psychology. In this article, the authors aim to show how synesthesia influences memory performance with regards to word lists that produce the experience of synesthesia. The authors claim that synesthetes place more emphasis on item-specific than relational processing. Memory performance is enhanced because this method allows to specifically target a particular memory during recall. In other words, memory retrieval is more organized around distinct features of each item rather than their similarities. The author’s intended audiences are psychologists and other academic professionals.
As the article was in the form of a study conducted by the authors, there was no bias. The authors were objective, providing both arguments and counter-arguments in the article. The article accurately concluded that people with synesthesia recall more words from lists than others, but have difficulty processing words with incongruent colors. The authors also clarify that synesthetes do not have an overall superior memory than others but just for items that elicit photisms. The weaknesses of this article were that it only focused on word lists and not on more complex forms such as sentences and narratives. Thus, it only shows one aspect of memory in synesthetes. Moreover, the article only focuses on those 18 years and older. It does not show the effects of such studies on children and senior citizens with synesthesia, who have problems with memory recall. However, the article supports the thesis of our project which is that people with synesthesia have better memory and inducing synesthesia can have positive effects on the performance of an individual. The information presented in this article is very significant because not only does it show the positive effects of synesthesia but also points out some of its problems such as difficulty of synesthetes in recalling words with incongruent colors, that we seek to avoid or improve.
“Reading with Your Ears: Readers’ Advisory and Audio Books.” Reference & User Services Quarterly. Vol. 37–50. American Library Association. 318–323. Web.
The author, Katie Mediatore, is library professional and has worked with a number of library associations. She specializes in reading trends and programming for adults. Mediatore explains the format preferences for listeners as well as what makes audio books so appealing to people who use them. She does this by proposing why people would need or want to use audio books as opposed to traditionally reading text. The casual nature of her writing suggests that her book is meant for the average reader and does not strive to be overly intellectual.
Due to her role as a library professional there may be a slight bias or over exaggeration on the popularity of audio books. She makes it sound as if audio books are more common place when in reality, it is probably more of a niche market. The strengths of this article is that it provides a number of reasons why someone would choose audio books in particular over reading. However, a weakness is that is does little to come up with theories about why audio books are still overshadowed by more popular mediums like books or kindles. The article definitely falls in line with our thesis because it shows how utilizing one of our other senses, hearing, has positively affected a number of people’s reading experience. With this, it is easy to claim that fully using synesthesia will garner the support from a number of readers. While the article focuses only on audio books and the sense of hearing instead of synesthesia as a whole, it still holds relevance by closely examining one particular form of medium that strays from the traditional reading experience.
Rouw, Romke, and K. Richard Ridderinkhof. “The Most Intriguing Question in Synesthesia Research.” Cognitive Neuroscience 5.2 (2014): 128-30.Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2452/doi/full/10.1080/17588928.2014.906400#tabModule>.
Both of the authors of this journal source work together at the University of Amsterdam’s center for the study of adaptive control in brain and behavior. Rouw and Ridderinkhof gathered information on the current analysis of synesthesia and put forth a broad, yet still unanswered question: “Why do most synesthetes *not* get confused by their additional sensations?” In the piece, they intend to clarify the boundaries of this question, in addition to attempting to answer it. The findings of the article extend past those in psychology departments around the world as it also begins to put together an even bigger question of personal realities and the lack of objectivity within them. Dealing with a heavily subjective topic, one would think there would be room for bias, yet the authors handle the research with scientific treatment and was tormented with quite a large amount of peer review before being released to the database. One of the major values of this source is that it answers questions that could worry our target audience and settles some fears of unwanted imaginative realities for children. It provides a great deal of detail about multiple types of synesthesia too, and mostly seems to focus on Grapheme-color synesthesia (like we will be doing in our presentation).
Sartain, J.D.. “Virtual Reality Gets Real.” N.p., 24 Sept. 2012. Web.
The author, J.D. Sartain, is a simple freelance journalist and therefore is not affiliated with any organization. The author does not have real thesis or stance but simply presents the various forms of virtual reality that already exist. The author’s intended audience is the average user and anyone who wants to find out more about virtual reality technology. The article is supplemented by an easy-to-use slideshow that has images and small paragraphs of text to supplement each picture. The presentation is simple meaning that the author wants his article to be easily accessible.
As I mentioned before, the article takes no real stance on virtual reality. It simply presents facts about the virtual reality technologies that are either in development or have already been released. Being a simple journalist without a psychological or scientific background, I cannot see him swaying the information in any way. The strengths of this article is that is has no bias and that it also presents an easy-to-read list of virtual reality technologies. It gives eleven different examples of devices and programs that utilize virtual reality giving readers a broad understanding of the way science is pursuing this field of study. On the other hand, the author has no scientific background and the article does little to go in depth with this topic. Aside from just referring to the article for examples of technology, it does not add much for our paper. The article does not really support nor negate our thesis. It does, however, still hold relevance as we would obviously want to compare our project with technologies that already exist. With this information we can fine tune our product by looking at what is already available and how our technology can offer something different.
(all images of the previous technologies are from the slideshow on this website)
Singh, Maanvi. “A Japanese IPhone Gadget Teases The Tummy With Food Smells.” NPR. NPR, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.
Swallow, Erica. “Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 25 Apr. 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2014.
Swanson, H. Lee, and Carole Sachse-Lee. “Download PDFs.” Mathematical Problem Solving and Working Memory in Children with Learning Disabilities: Both Executive and Phonological Processes Are Important. Elsevier, July 2001. Web. 06 Dec. 2014.
Velmans, Max. “PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND VIRTUAL REALITIES.” University of London 45–60. Web.
Max Velmans is a professor at the University of London working in the Department of Psychology. Being an expert in psychology, he is well qualified in discussing the neurological effects of virtual reality. Velmans believes that the effects of virtual reality and its experiences far differ from that of physical and even psychological reality. The author’s main audience seems to lean towards students majoring in psychology or any others working in that field. With its above-average terminology and usage of diagrams to explain its arguments, this article is most likely not geared for the average reader.
Being a psychologist, the author may over analyze the differences between the different realities. Although I understand that there may be slight neurological and cognitive differences in the varying experiences, I also think that if a theoretical perfect virtual reality were to exist, the differences would be more negligible than what the author is proposing. Other than that, it tends to be more wrapped up in definitions making the whole article surprisingly neutral as a whole. Perhaps the greatest strength of this article is that it touches upon all five senses. He explains the projections of virtual reality on people through the different senses that are triggered. The article is extremely thorough and does a great job defining the different realities as well as explaining what it truly means to be in a virtual reality. However, it is also very concerned with definitions. While it helps better our understanding of virtual reality, or group will get no opinions, case studies or examples to further illustrate our cause. For the most part, it supports our thesis that virtual reality will give its users a unique experience, but because the author spends so much time defining terminology, the article tends to be quite neutral. Still, this article is very appropriate for our paper because it explores all the different ways something can be a virtual reality. By focusing on the projections working on our senses, the article becomes even more relevant as we are talking about synesthesia.
Yaro, Caroline, and Jamie Ward. “Searching for Shereshevskii: What Is Superior about the Memory of Synaesthetes?” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 60.5 (2007): 681-95. Web. 4 Dec. 2014. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470210600785208>.
Caroline Yaro is a research assistant in the Institute of Child Health at University College London. Jamie Ward is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the same university, whose main research interest includes synaesthesia. In this article, the authors aim to study to what extent a powerful memory is a characteristic of synesthetes and to explain this difference with respect to the cognitive workings of the memory system in the brain. The authors claim that people with synesthesia have better memory for stimuli that induce synesthesia in comparison to stimuli that do not. They also claims that synesthesia usually possess a far superior memory is because of their better memory and perception of color. The intended audiences of the authors are other professors of psychology and academia in the sciences.
The article is objective and displayed no bias as the authors evaluated both the advantages and disadvantages of synesthesia. The strengths of the article are its explanation of how synesthesia operates in the brain and how it heightens memory of synesthetes. They clearly show the potentiality of synesthetic elements being simulated in non-synesthetes for enhanced memory and perception. However, the authors only tested the elements of synesthesia in the synesthetes for better memory but did not test non-synesthetes that were trained with synesthetic elements. This would have allowed a better understanding whether the superior memory in synesthetes in innate or acquired. The information in the article supports our thesis as it verifies that synesthesia results in a superior memory and perception. The article is very relevant for our paper because it provides us with a cognitive understanding of synesthesia to explain the phenomenon.