They are a ubiquitous childhood toy: alphabet fridge magnets. You may remember some from your own childhood, though they probably weren’t your most beloved of games.
But for some people, especially those growing up in the late 70s or 80s, one particular set left a deep impression — it forever changed the colors they associate with letters. That’s the conclusion of a new study on synesthesia, a condition where sensory stimuli overlap.
The study finds that more than 6 percent of American synesthetes have color associations that match a particular Fisher-Price fridge magnet set. And that finding will force scientists to rethink how synesthesia works.
Roughly 1 in 10,000 people have synesthesia, but these estimates are rough at best. In synesthetes the stimulation of one sense activates another — think of smelling color or tasting words. It’s thought that the most common form is grapheme-synesthesia, or linking letters with colors. ...
