title: Language influences number processing--a quadrilingual study.
abstract: Reading/writing direction or number word formation influence performance even in basic numerical tasks such as magnitude comparison. However, so far the interaction of these language properties has not been evaluated systematically. In this study we tested English, German, Hebrew, and Arab participants realizing a natural 2 × 2 design of reading/writing direction (left-to-right vs. right-to-left) and number word formation (non-inverted vs. inverted, i.e., forty-seven vs. seven-and-forty). Symbolic number magnitude comparison was specifically influenced by the interaction of reading/writing direction and number word formation: participants from cultures where reading direction and the order of tens and units in number words are incongruent (i.e., German and Hebrew) exhibited more pronounced unit interference in place-value integration. A within-group comparison indicated that this effect was not due to differences in education. Thus, basic cultural differences in numerical cognition were driven by natural language variables and their specific combination.
authors.affiliation: Knowledge Media Research Center, Tuebingen, Germany; Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen, Germany. Electronic address: k.moeller@iwm-kmrc.de.
authors.forename: Korbinian
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moeller
authors.affiliation: Ariel University, Ariel, Israel.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shaki
authors.affiliation: University of York, York, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Silke M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Göbel
authors.affiliation: Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen, Germany; Knowledge Media Research Center, Tuebingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans-Christoph
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Nuerk
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D019303:Multilingualism; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Language differences; Magnitude comparison; Number processing; Number word inversion