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Inversion effects on mental arithmetic in English- and Polish-speaking adults

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posted on 2020-05-20, 11:19 authored by Carolin Annette Lewis, Julia BahnmuellerJulia Bahnmueller, Marta Wesierska, Korbinian MoellerKorbinian Moeller, Silke Melanie Göbel
In some languages the order of tens and units in number words is inverted compared with the symbolic digital notation (e.g., German 23 → “ dreiundzwanzig,” literally: “ three-and-twenty”). In other languages only teen-numbers are inverted (e.g., English 17 → “ seventeen”; Polish 17 → “ siedemnaście” literally “ seventeen”). Previous studies have focused on between group comparisons of inverted and non-inverted languages and showed that number word inversion impairs performance on basic numerical tasks and arithmetic. In two independent experiments, we investigated whether number word inversion affects addition performance within otherwise non-inverted languages (Exp. 1: English, Exp. 2: Polish). In particular, we focused on the influence of inverted ( I; English: teen-numbers ⩾ 13, Polish: numbers 11–19) and non-inverted ( N) summands with sums between 13 and 39. Accordingly, three categories of addition problems were created: N + N, N + I, and I + I with problem size matched across categories. Across both language groups, we observed that problems with results in the 20 and 30 number range were responded to faster when only non-inverted summands were part of the problems as opposed to problems with one or two inverted summands. In line with this, the cost of a carry procedure was the largest for two inverted summands. The results support the notion that both language-specific and language-invariant aspects contribute to addition problem-solving. In particular though, regarding language-specific aspects, the results indicate that inverted number word formation of teens influences place-value processing of Arabic digits even in otherwise non-inverted languages.

Funding

Leibniz-Competition Fund [SAW-2014-IWM-4].

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematical Sciences

Published in

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Volume

73

Issue

1

Pages

91 - 103

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Experimental Psychology Society

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819881983. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.

Acceptance date

2019-07-08

Publication date

2019-11-16

Copyright date

2019

ISSN

1747-0218

eISSN

1747-0226

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Julia Bahnmuller. Deposit date: 19 May 2020

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