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Twilight Talk: An introduction to synaesthesia, its co-occurrence with autism and its effect on sensory processing, learning and understanding

  • Webcasts
  • 03 Oct 2025
Twilight Talks

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.

Once you have finished watching this recording please do complete our short evaluation. 

You can read more about our Twilight Talks sessions on our dedicated page.

Suitable for: A parent/carer, Administration Staff, Assistant Head Teacher, Consultant, Deputy Head Teacher, Early Years Practitioner, Educational Psychologist, Governor, Head Teacher, Inclusion Manager/Leader, Newly Qualified Teacher, SENCO, Senior Leader, Student, Support staff, Teacher, Teaching Assistant, Tutor, Young person, Other

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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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