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