The effect of languages on the production and recognition of numbers in German-French bilinguals

How do bilinguals produce and recognize two-digit number words? We investigated this question at different language proficiency levels in German-French bilinguals. German two-digit number words indeed follow the unit-decade order, whereas in French the order is decade-unit. Our study was conducted in Luxembourg where pupils learn both languages at primary school. Moreover mathematics are taught in German at primary school but in French at secondary school. Pupils from grades 5 (primary school), 8 (beginning of secondary school) and 11 (middle of secondary school) performed two numerical tasks: In the number recognition task, participants were presented a spoken number word that they had to recognize among four visually presented Arabic numbers. In the number production task, participants had to pronounce visually presented Arabic numbers. Both tasks were performed in German and in French and we compared language-related performance differences for the 3 levels of language proficiencies. Participants of all levels recognized and produced number-words more efficiently in their dominant language (i.e. German). However, this advantage for the dominant language was especially prominent at the lowest level of language proficiency when mathematics education was implemented in the dominant language (i.e. German). Furthermore, performance levels decreased with increasing number size, but over and above this general trend, participants of all proficiency levels showed specific difficulties with the complex structure of French number words over 60. Taken together, these results support the view that number and language processing are tightly associated, since language proficiency and language structure influence very simple and basic numerical tasks.