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And I think you are exactly right about kids especially learning not to speak up (once they figure out not everyone perceives things the same way they do). Science deals in reproducible, quantifyable information and the isolated cases of unusual perception are very very difficult to study. I wish, though, that the such differences were not labeled "abnormality" or "defect" and instead to be just another example of how limited our understanding of the range of human perception is. I think cases like yours illustrate the point that perception really IS everything. If everyone's association of color and depth were like yours, it would be another facet of "known physiology". Ergo, there is no singular, real perception - only what we each experience. I have this idea for a SciFi novel where the basis for autism is finally found to be a severe form of synesthesia - ALL auditory stimuli are perceived as light, all light as sound, etc. And so they set out to make a world that is "right" for kids with autism - one where 90% of the input is sound, 10% sight, etc. The exact opposite of our sensory world. It is interesting to try and imagine how a "normal" perceiving person would experience such a world - and maybe that is how autistics experience the world that WE have made that reflects our sensory heirarchy (visual more than sound, more than tactile, etc).