Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Number/Color Association, etc.

DD8 has recently told us she associates colors to numbers meaning when she thinks of certain numbers they have a color. Like 2 is yellow to her and 3 is green. At first we thought she was just being silly, but DH and I tried to test her on this over the next couple days and she was consistent each time.

This is the DD we just got testing results on and she is pretty "out there" on the high end of the bell curve. I plan to do some research on this and I wonder if she associates more than just colors and numbers. I also plan to ask her more questions about this.

Not sure if this is truly a case of Synesthesia or not. Does anyone else's kiddos do this and could this just be part of being a visual learner?

I did/do this and so do my kids.

Once my older son said to me, "I know why I can't remember the difference between Saturday and Sunday. They're both red!"

The older one seems to have it more strongly than the younger one. The older one has dyslexia, and I've heard that it's more prevalent in dyslexics. As you can see from the above example, it's not just with numbers, but also with letters, days of the week, months, years, decades, even words. None of us actually sees colors, it's just a really strong association.

Sounds like classic synaesthesia to me - why are you thinking not?

My older son does it - each number has a color... he is not a visual learner at all (very dependant on auditory). He has dysgraphia. I am not sure if my younger son does it...

This is interesting. We thought DD may have dyslexia or dysgraphia (and we still are not totally convinced she doesn't), but the testers say they don't think she does.

Not really sure exactly...

I just remember when I was about that same age (or maybe younger) I associated numbers and colors with male/female. It was more of a game to me and I don't still do it.

It may also be just because I don't know much about it and it is something we just learned.

I did this at that age, and I assumed everyone did this associated the same colors with numbers that I did. I was surprised to learn that others not only didn't have the same colors, but didn't do this at all, when they'd say things like "What do you mean 3 is orange. What are you talking about. Numbers aren't colors." I still remember my number-color correspondence, but I stopped associating them at about age 9 or 10 when I realized others didn't see it that way, but also realized that the correspondence didn't have significance mathematically.

I don't think it's truly a case of Synesthesia, maybe a very mild form.

DD has this. None of the rest of us do. She has the "quirkiest" brain in the family, in my opinion--shades of ASD, SPD, ADHD, and prodigious/photographic memory, along with depression, anxiety, and great creativity (visual and writing, but this extends to almost anything). No official dx other than anxiety/depression, though, and definitely no LDs. Her school performance is very even across the board.

Interestingly, some of the synesthesia seems to be fading as she gets older--she reports that that the letter-color associations are sort of going away, though number/color remains as strong and consistent as ever. This is apparently not uncommon.

The net has tons of interesting research on this. It seems to be hard to know the true incidence, but I've met quite a few people with some form of it since I learned that DD has it.

This is how my son was... I heard about it and I said casually to DS one day, "DS do numbers have colors?" He said "of course..." and rattled off a bunch of numbers and their corrresponding numbers. He became self-conscious at my surprise and amazement

At least some numbers-colors association are not due to synesthesia.

For example, if a person made either of the following two associations, one should not suspect synesthesia.

1 White
2 Red
3 Light green
4 Crimson
5 Yellow
6 Dark green
7 Black
8 Brown
9 Blue
10 Orange


1 Red
2 Yellow
3 Green
4 Brown
5 Blue
6 Pink
7 Black

I'd be worried to ask my DS as I suspect he'll say yes, find the idea fascinating and decide what color each number is. Or say yes that they are all green since green is his favorite color, and he loves all numbers equally.

Can you explain more - why do you say this?

You missed

0 Black
1 Brown
2 Red
3 Orange
4 Yellow
5 Green
6 Blue
7 Violet
8 Grey
9 White

I'd be interested to hear whether anyone else here has experienced colour associations or physical sensations in response to everyday sounds. It seems we have a visual bias among the synesthetes here.

For instance, C major has always "felt" gold to me, perfect fifths and octaves give me a pleasant, involuntary tingling sensation in the crown of my head that emanates down my spine and radiates through my arms and legs (distinct from the notion of frisson/shivers).

I suspected that my DS is somewhat, maybe very mildly, synesthetic. I remember when he was 8 and first played in an orchestra he wanted to audition for a solo part but not another one. His rationale is that "the first green part is beautiful", and "the second one is a yellow part that's ugly".

It seems that musical notes and passages have colors to him all these years, but he doesn't mention it as much as when he was younger. Don't know if he just got used to it or the brain connections changed. But it was fun to listen.

OK. Just googled. Is this because of cuisinaire rods?

Anyway, I see letters as colors, too, and there aren't any manipulatives for that. Sesame Street may be to blame, though.

The number jacks, sesame st and cuisinere rods. But some words have colours and shapes so why not numbers? Ok so maybe other people don't see words as pointy or whatever, never mind?

I asked my son, "What color is 5?" and he gave me a weird look. After a long pause, he said "Yellow? Did I get it right?"

haha. Guess he doesn't see numbers as colors.

22B - thanks for explaining! I thought maybe I was missing something right in front of my face.

Dd does this and I did, too. We agree on some but not all. I figured it might come from posters in our classrooms or favorite books etc that imprinted a color on a number or letter, or common examples of them (T is green, perhaps because they always show turtles in our abc books... And it starts the word three, which is also green!). But maybe it is some synesthesia.

My mide DDs letter/colour pairings are clearly from learning the alphabet playing on Starfall, her colours are a perfect match for Starfall.

DH told me he has always seen music as colors and patterns. I will have to ask ODS.

My DD9 has recently told me that sometimes she is distracted by the arguments that the numbers have with one another. Apparently the number 7 is particularly pouty. This has been going on for years but she has only mentioned it recently. Have any others here experienced/encountered anything similar?

Numbers definitely have characters. 7 is the privileged big sister, 5 is cool, 2 is like a big happy dog or smart-enough jock, 4 is friendly, 6 is the number I identified with...

This is me too. Also people's voices are colours. The narrator of the YouTube vid that my son is currently watching is blue with smears of brown. It's a youngish (20 something) voice so in places the blue is thin, like water colour, but it's a little deep, so that's where the brown blending comes in.

FWIW, I read a book on synesthesia years ago, and I don't think I have it. For me it's more like a processing thing - like a visual representation of sound. I think true synesthesia is more striking and vivid (for lack of a better description).

Found it!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tasted-Shapes-Bradford-Books/dp/0262532557

"The ten people in one million who are synesthetes are born into a world where one sensation (such as sound) conjures up one or more others (such as taste or color)."

Good book.

Not to digress too much, but aquinas mentioned something I just heard about on NPR: autonomous sensory meridian response. ASMR is a real thing, different people have different triggers, which for you are perfect fifths and octaves.

DS15 has talked about synesthesia for years, I didn't know about the cuisine ire, etc. Now I'll have to review his connections with him to see what it is! And BTW, I used to think I had it, but was probably influenced by my obsession with color-by-number sets when I was a kid.

The book _A Mango Shaped Space_ by Wendy Mass is about a child with synesthesia. Might be interesting for your DC to check out.