The influence of language on exact additions in bilingual pupils and adults.

To which degree is language involved in arithmetic? We investigated this question in a German-French bilingual setting. In Luxembourg, bilingualism is acquired through education: mathematics are taught in German in primary and in French in secondary school. Interestingly, the decades and units within two-digit number names follow the unit-decade order in German but the decade-unit order in French.

We studied our research question in the multi-lingual educational context of Luxembourg by applying a developmental design. The present sample (total N = 200) included students from grades 7, 8, 10 and 11, as well as an adult bilingual group. This sample takes advantage of following the progressive transition from German to French as teaching languages.

All participants performed simple and complex additions that they had to orally respond either in German or in French. Additions were presented in different conditions: (1) visual Arabic presentation, (2) auditory presentation (in German or in French), and (3) as a dual task in which visually presented additions were preceded by visually presented semantic judgements to indirectly activate a German or French language context.

The results suggested that language proficiency seems to be crucial for the computation of more complex calculations, whereas simple additions can be retrieved equally well in both languages. Taken together, these results support the view of a strong language impact on calculations. Further results and implications will be discussed.