title: Reexamining the language account of cross-national differences in base-10 number representations.
abstract: East Asian students consistently outperform students from other nations in mathematics. One explanation for this advantage is a language account; East Asian languages, unlike most Western languages, provide cues about the base-10 structure of multi-digit numbers, facilitating the development of base-10 number representations. To test this view, the current study examined how kindergartners represented two-digit numbers using single unit-blocks and ten-blocks. The participants (N=272) were from four language groups (Korean, Mandarin, English, and Russian) that vary in the extent of "transparency" of the base-10 structure. In contrast to previous findings with older children, kindergartners showed no cross-language variability in the frequency of producing base-10 representations. Furthermore, they showed a pattern of within-language variability that was not consistent with the language account and was likely attributable to experiential factors. These findings suggest that language might not play as critical a role in the development of base-10 representations as suggested in earlier research.
authors.affiliation: Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. Electronic address: vasilyev@bc.edu.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vasilyeva
authors.affiliation: Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. Electronic address: laski@bc.edu.
authors.forename: Elida V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Laski
authors.affiliation: Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ermakova
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 106, Taiwan, Republic of China.
authors.forename: Weng-Feng
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yoonkyung
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jeong
authors.affiliation: Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hachigian
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D002648:Child; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics
keywords: Base-10; Cross-national; Language; Mathematics; Numeric; Representation