27.12.2013 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

limited set <strong>of</strong> symbols (cf. Verguts & de Moor, 2005). <strong>The</strong> results <strong>of</strong> Studies 3 and 4 <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />

present <strong>the</strong>sis indicated that apart form inter-individual differences <strong>the</strong> development <strong>of</strong><br />

decomposed processing <strong>of</strong> multi-digit <strong>number</strong>s is also liable to inter-cultural differences. <strong>The</strong><br />

<strong>structure</strong> <strong>of</strong> different <strong>number</strong> word systems may ei<strong>the</strong>r hinder or corroborate <strong>the</strong> successful<br />

mastery <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>place</strong>-<strong>value</strong> <strong>structure</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Arabic</strong> <strong>number</strong> system. Synced with <strong>the</strong> results <strong>of</strong><br />

Study 7, in which <strong>the</strong> strictly decomposed model was found to account best for typical<br />

empirical effects in two-digit <strong>number</strong> comparison model, this may have important<br />

implications for <strong>the</strong> nature <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> human representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>number</strong> magnitude. In particular,<br />

<strong>the</strong> fact that a holistic representation <strong>of</strong> two-digit <strong>number</strong> magnitude is not mandatory to<br />

simulate typical empirical effects in <strong>number</strong> comparison suggests that <strong>the</strong> decomposed<br />

representations <strong>of</strong> e.g., tens and unit do not seem to be integrated into one entity representing<br />

<strong>the</strong> overall magnitude <strong>of</strong> a given <strong>number</strong>, at least for symbolic notation. In turn, <strong>the</strong> current<br />

findings imply that at most <strong>the</strong> representations <strong>of</strong> single digit <strong>number</strong>s up to 9 may be<br />

grounded on a holistic non-symbolic counterpart whereas representations <strong>of</strong> multi-digit<br />

<strong>number</strong>s above 10 may involve no direct reference to a non-symbolic quantity representation.<br />

Please note that this interpretation fits nicely into <strong>the</strong> ongoing debate on notation dependent or<br />

notation independent / abstract representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>number</strong> magnitude (e.g., Cohen-Kadosh &<br />

Walsh, 2009; Piazza, Pinel, Le Bihan, & Dehaene, 2007; Cohen-Kadosh, Cohen-Kadosh,<br />

Kaas, Henik, & Goebel, 2007).<br />

PRÉCIS<br />

All in all, <strong>the</strong> results <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> this <strong>the</strong>sis, obtained from a broad variety <strong>of</strong> numerical<br />

tasks administered to different populations (i.e., German- and Italian-speaking children,<br />

healthy adults, and neglect patients) and assessed using different experimental methodologies<br />

(i.e., reaction time, eye-tracking , and fMRI paradigms) lend fur<strong>the</strong>r support to <strong>the</strong> notion that<br />

a mental representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>place</strong>-<strong>value</strong> <strong>structure</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Arabic</strong> <strong>number</strong> system exists.<br />

310

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!