How does Language influence Number transcoding?

The German number word system inverts units and tens compared to the Arabic notation. This is not the case in French, which is more transparent with respect to the Arabic number code. The linguistic structure of number words can facilitate or impede numerical development and performances in number transcoding tasks. We used an original transcoding paradigm with 4th grade French-speaking children, 4th grade German-speaking children, as well as French-speaking and German-speaking young adults who listened to two-digit numbers and had to identify the heard number among four visually presented Arabic numbers. The novelty of our paradigm consisted in manipulating the order of appearance of the units and tens of the Arabic numbers, leading to three conditions: units-first, tens-first and simultaneous appearance.

Results revealed that German-speaking children were globally slower than their French-speaking peers. In contrast, language did not affect overall transcoding speed in young adults. Moreover children from both language groups were faster in transcoding when the order of digit appearance was congruent with the number word system (i.e. units-first in German and tens-first in French) compared to the incongruent and the simultaneous presentation order. This pattern indicates that children tended to process number sequentially during the transcoding task. This pattern differed from the behavior observed in adult, since both German- and French-speaking adults solved the transcoding task faster when tens were presented before units (i.e. tens-first) than the reverse.