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Twilight Talk: An introduction to synaesthesia, its co-occurrence with autism and its effect on sensory processing, learning and understanding.
- Online
- 07 Oct 2025 (16:00 - 17:00)
This session will explore synaesthesia, an unusual cognitive processing condition that causes a crossover of sensory inputs and responses. In parallel to the sensory crossovers, synaesthesia is also characterised by abstract-conceptual visualisations that begin to manifest during the early years teaching period and which can play a key role in learning and understanding.
Anyone can have synaesthesia, but recent research has found it to be four to five times more common in people who are autistic - some synaesthetic responses can even provide a mechanism to help explain why certain autistic traits manifest as they do.
The presentation is aimed at teaching staff, SEN professionals and parents to provide an introduction to synaesthesia, explain many of its various manifestations and describe how the condition might present in a classroom setting and the ways in which it could impact on behaviour and learning, both positively and negatively.
Online
Suitable for: A parent/carer, Assistant Head Teacher, Consultant, Deputy Head Teacher, Early Years Practitioner, Education psychologist, Governor, Head Teacher, Inclusion Manager/Leader, Newly Qualified Teacher, SENCO, Senior Leader, Student, Support staff, Teacher, Tutor, Young person
Meet your trainer
Tim Dickson
Tim Dickson is a journalist whose perception and understanding of the world has been shaped by synaesthesia. Later in life he was also diagnosed as autistic, but what really opened his eyes was that several issues he had spent a lifetime interpreting through synaesthetic prism in fact turned out to be key identifiers of the autistic condition. Since then he has been working with schools and other academic bodies to raise awareness of synaesthesia and its co-occurrence with autism in the hope it might help to better serve the needs of children who process and learn about the world in a slightly different way.
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