How would you describe the physical feeling of a color? Warm? Cold? Slippery? Coarse? Sticky? Would you be able to distinguish between colored objects without looking at them? This 1960s episode of Science and Engineering reported that several young women in the Soviet Union were able to correctly identify colors based on touch alone, a phenomenon called “dermo-optical perception.”
Science and Engineering was a production of Radio Moscow’s English language news service and the program with perhaps the best theme music. Typical of Cold War era nationalist grandstanding, the 10-minute news feature boasted Soviet advancements in the Space Race, medical treatments, and infrastructure projects. This episode treats reports of dermo-optical perception as breaking news, acknowledging the skeptics, but countering with a multitude of research studies which posit that the subjects couldn’t possibly have cheated and that the phenomenon is “an established fact.”
A particular test subject, 22-year-old Rosa Kuleshova, allegedly exhibited this ability while blindfolded, with a finger placed over the eyepiece of an anomaloscope, a device used to verify color blindness. The narrator (most likely Joe Adamov) announces triumphantly, “[Kuleshova] was able to determine the colors as precisely as the average person does with his eyes; the fingers of her right hand gave the correct answers in all six tests.” News of Kuleshova’s ability reached American press and even earned her a 1964 profile in Life Magazine.1
The author Albert Rosenfeld and Life Magazine Correspondent Bob Brigham also seemed convinced of Kuleshova’s ability and described similar research conducted by American psychologists. Dr. Richard P. Youtz, a professor of psychology at Barnard College, claimed that he identified a 42-year-old housewife in Flint Michigan who possessed the ability. Rosenfeld reported that “She [Patricia Stanley] had been tested for some 60 hours and Dr. Youtz was quite certain that his test conditions were rigorous enough to rule out any possibility of a hoax.” Dr. Gregory Razran, a psychologist at Queens College participated in experiments in the Soviet Union and became an enthusiastic believer in this supposed scientific breakthrough. He claims that he observed a Russian scientist who could teach the ability to one student for every six that tried. Rosenfeld writes,
Yellow, they said, felt slippery, soft and lightweight. Blue, while not so slippery as yellow, was smoother and the hand could move more freely over it. Red was sticky and clinging. Green was stickier than red but not so course. Indigo was very sticky but harder than red and green. Orange was hard and rough, and inhibited movement. Violet was even rougher and more inhibiting than orange. Black was very inhibiting and clinging, almost gluey, while white was quite smooth, though coarser than Yellow.
A 1966 article by Martin Gardner in Science, explains this supposed ability is a simple magic trick that trained mentalists have been performing for decades: a peek down the nose.2 According to Gardner, there is no way to fully block a person’s sight with a blindfold. There will always be a small gap to peek through, especially if the person lifts their head in a “sniff posture.” Without divulging all the secrets of the performance, Gardner says that,
Practiced performers avoid the sniff posture by tilting the head slightly under cover of some gesture, such as nodding in reply to a question, scratching the neck, and other common gestures. One of the great secrets of successful blindfold work is to obtain a peek in advance, covered by a gesture, quickly memorize whatever information is in view, then later-perhaps many minutes later-to exploit this information under the pretense that it is just then being obtained. Who could expect observers to remember exactly what happened 5 minutes earlier? Indeed, only a trained mentalist, serving as an observer, would know exactly what to look for.
He describes the initial tests conducted by Dr. Youtz with Patricia Stanley as "so poorly designed to eliminate visual clues that they cannot be taken seriously." According to a New York Times reporter who witnessed the tests, Mrs. Stanley needed several minutes to provide an answer and kept “a steady flow of conversation” with Youtz, asking for hints on her performance.3,4 After Youtz consulted with Gardner for a second, more rigorous round of tests, her odds of correctly identifying colors and patterns on cards was just above that of chance.5 According to Gardner, Soviet Scientists experienced the same drop in results with Rosa, and her equally hyped contemporary Nina Kulagina, when more precautions were taken to account for mentalist tricks. Scientific inquiry into the alleged phenomenon waned after the 1960s.
In 2007 Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell wrote, "To date, no one has demonstrated convincingly, under suitably controlled conditions, the existence of X-ray sight or any other form of clairvoyance or ESP."6 However, if you suspect you may possess the ability, Rosa Kuleshova insisted in her Life Magazine article, “Anyone who really tries can do it.”
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.
WNYC archives id: 150287
Municipal archives id: T4057
[1] Rosenfeld, Albert. Seeing Color with the Fingers. Life Magazine. Vol. 56 No. 24. 12 June 1964, pp. 102-113.
[2] Gardner, Martin. Dermo-optical Perception: A Peek Down the Nose. Science. 11 February 1966: Vol. 151, Issue 3711, pp. 654-657.
[3] Plumb, Robert K. "Woman Who Tells Colors by Touch Mystifies Psychologist." New York Times, 8 January 1964.
[4] Plumb, Robert K. "6th Sense Is Hinted in Ability to 'See' With Fingers." New York Times, 26 January 1964.
[5] "Housewife Is Unable to Repeat Color 'Readings' With Fingers." New York Times, 2 February 1964.
[6] Nickell, Joe. "Second Sight: The Phenomenon of Eyeless Vision." Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. 2007. University Press of Kentucky, pp. 211-218.