In this opinion paper we present some recent observations from the literature on numerical synesthesia indicating that magnitude representation may play a role in mediating synesthetic effects found under experimental settings. However, when considering two main findings in the domain of numerical cognition-(a) that symbolic content is intimately associated with non-symbolic dimensions (e.g., size, quantity, brightness) (e.g., Schwarz and Heinze, 1998 Fias et al., 2003 Pinel et al., 2004 Ansari, 2008 Cohen Kadosh et al., 2008a), and (b) that magnitude is assumed to be automatically activated whenever we are presented with numbers ( Dehaene et al., 1993 Dehaene and Akhavein, 1995)-one must wonder whether synesthetic experience can also be elicited by different magnitude dimensions. Furthermore, some researchers showed that non-symbolic magnitudes (i.e., random clusters of dots) or less familiar symbolic numerals (i.e., Roman numbers) were ineffective in evoking the synesthetic concurrent ( Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001, Experiment 3 Ward and Sagiv, 2007), suggesting that Arabic numbers per se (i.e., their form, ordinality, etc.) and not their semantic meaning or numerosity are the critical factors for inducing synesthetic experience ( Hubbard et al., 2009). This was mainly because most synesthetes report their synesthetic experience is elicited solely by symbolic content (i.e., Arabic numbers) but not by non-symbolic ones (i.e., size, quantity) ( Cohen Kadosh and Gertner, 2011). Until recently, numerical synesthesia was almost unquestionably viewed as a symbolic-based phenomenon. For example, for a given synesthete, an audition of the number 5 may trigger a sensation of the color shiny yellow, be mapped on a vertical meridian above four and beneath six in his/her peripersonal space or elicit a cognitive awareness of “a young man, ordinary, and common in his tastes and appearance …” ( Simner et al., 2011). In numerical synesthesia, numbers (i.e., inducer) automatically and consistently trigger an ancillary experience of color, texture, spatial location, or personification (i.e., concurrent). Synesthetic inducers can be sensory (e.g., sound) or conceptual (e.g., graphemes, time units) while the concurrent sensation is, in the majority of cases, a sensory one (e.g., smell, touch). All synesthetic bindings are characterized by an inducing stimulus (i.e., inducer) and a subjective sensation triggered concurrently (i.e., concurrent). Synesthesia is a peculiar condition that involves an atypical binding between two seemingly independent sensory modalities or within the same one.
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