Journal
RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES
Volume 32, Issue 6, Pages 2683-2689Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2011.06.004
Keywords
Numerical cognition; Transcoding; Number-word system; Working memory; Czech children
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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 dvadsetpat [twenty-five] or in inverted order patadvadset [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. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available