title: One language, two number-word systems and many problems: numerical cognition in the Czech language.
abstract: Comparing numerical performance between different languages does not only mean comparing different number-word systems, but also implies a comparison of differences regarding culture or educational systems. The Czech language provides the remarkable opportunity to disentangle this confound as there exist two different number-word systems within the same language: for instance, "25" can be either coded in non-inverted order "dvadsetpät" [twenty-five] or in inverted order "pätadvadset" [five-and-twenty]. To investigate the influence of the number-word system on basic numerical processing within one culture, 7-year-old Czech-speaking children had to perform a transcoding task (i.e., writing Arabic numbers to dictation) in both number-word systems. The observed error pattern clearly indicated that the structure of the number-word system determined transcoding performance reliably: In the inverted number-word system about half of all errors were inversion-related. In contrast, hardly any inversion-related errors occurred in the non-inverted number-word system. We conclude that the development of numerical cognition does not only depend on cultural or educational differences, but is indeed related to the structure and transparency of a given number-word system.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Psychology, UMIT The Health and Life Science University, Eduard Wallnöfer Zentrum 1, 6060 Hall in Tyrol, Austria. silvia.pixner@umit.at
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pixner
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zuber
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Heřmanová
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kaufmann
authors.forename: H-C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Nuerk
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moeller
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D018153:Czech Republic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics / Q000193:education*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology