title: Synesthesia and number cognition in children.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2PQ, UK. jakg2@cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Jennifer A K
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Green
authors.forename: Usha
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Goswami
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008433:Mathematics