The influence of the place-value structure of the Arabic number ...

specificity. Yet, in adults it has been observed that the inversion property influences even
non-verbal tasks such as Arabic number comparison (Nuerk et al., 2005). In this non-verbal
task, the integration of tens and units seemed to be more difficult in a language with inversion
(i.e., German) than in a language without inversion (i.e., English). However, Moeller et al.
(2009a) recently argued that the integration of the ten’s and unit’s magnitudes is also essential
for the performance pattern in the number line task making the general objective of this study
straightforward: When inversion influences unit-decade – integration into the place-value
structure of the Arabic number system and when this integration is essential for performance
in the number line task, inversion should also influence performance in the number line task.
In particular, we should observe specific cross-cultural language differences in a task which
was previously assumed to index (non-verbal) spatial magnitude representation of numbers.
Objectives
As outlined above, the current study aimed at investigating whether language as
reflected by the structure of its number word system influences performance in a non-verbal
spatial-numerical task. This issue was pursued by comparing German-speaking children using
an inverted number word system to Italian-speaking children using a regular non-inverted
number word system regarding their performance in a number line task. Thus, the inversion
property of German number words is used to evaluate whether the reversed order of tens and
units poses particular difficulty on children developing and/or applying the mental spatial
representation of two-digit number magnitude.
More specifically, the hypotheses were three-fold:
- In a first step differences in overall estimation accuracy between Italian and Austrian
(native German-speaking) children when performing the number-line task were of
interest. It was expected that the reversed order of tens and units in German increases the
estimation error in Austrian children.
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