Synesthesia and number cognition in children

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-col...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2008, Vol.106 (1), p.463-473
Main Authors: Green, Jennifer A.K., Goswami, Usha
Format: Article
Language:English
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
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.01.013