Synesthesia and number cognition in children

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 106; no. 1; pp. 463 - 473
• Main Authors: Green, Jennifer A.K., Goswami, Usha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 2008; Elsevier; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Child psychology; Children; Cognition; Cognitive development; Cognitive Processes; Color; Color Perception; Developmental psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Grapheme-colour; Graphemes; Humans; Imagination; Learning Problems; Mathematics; Neuropsychology; Number Concepts; Number processing; Numbers; Perceptual Impairments; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Sensory Integration; Synesthesia; Visual Perception; Grapheme-colour; Synesthesia; Number processing; Human; Color; Cognition; Synaesthesia; School age; Grapheme; Number; Adolescent; Perception; Child
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.01.013

Grapheme-color synesthesia, when achromatic digits evoke an experience of a specific color (photisms), has been shown to be consistent, involuntary, and linked with number concept in adults, yet there have been no comparable investigations with children. We present a systematic study of grapheme-color synesthesia in children aged between 7 and 15 years. Here we show that such children (but not children with phoneme-color synesthesia) experience involuntary difficulties in numerical tasks when digits are presented in colors incongruent with their photisms. Synesthesia in children may thus have important consequences for certain aspects of numerical cognition.