Linguistic Influences on Numerical Cognition: A cross-cultural investigation using natural specificities of Polish and German languages
Final Report Abstract
In recent years, multiple studies have shown linguistic influences on number processing. However, the influence of grammatical number (i.e., singular, plural, and possible other forms like dual) has only been investigated in toddlers. One reason was that appropriate manipulations were missing. In this German-Polish Beethoven DFG-NCN cooperation project, we made use of a particular inconsistency of the Polish grammar: The number 1 stands with singular verb inflection, 2-4 with plural, but 5-9 with singular again. This continues for multi-digit numbers (e.g., 21 stands with singular, 22-24 with plural, but 25-29 with singular again). This means that there is an incongruency between grammatical number and the quantity referred to by symbolic numbers like number words or Arabic numerals, as the larger numbers 5-9 correspond to the smaller grammatical number. We systematically investigated such grammatical number effects in older children and adults, for single- and multi-digit numbers and in different tasks. Across different experiments, the general picture of results was quite clear. • We observed systematic effects of grammatical number on the acquisition of number concepts for 3-to-6-year-old children. This extends previous results from younger toddlers. • We also observed some effects of grammatical number for school children, but they did not systematically relate to conceptual symbolic number processing. • We observed null or only very small unsystematic effects of grammatical number in adults across various paradigms and for single- and multi-digit numbers. We conclude that in contrast to other linguistic effects, which could be demonstrated for adults, there is no major influence of grammatical number on adults’ numerical processing. Therefore, potential applications refer to children, but not to adults: Preschool children from 3-6 years should be supported in their acquisition of numeircal concepts, especially if in their native language grammatical number is incongruent with conceptual number. School children may have problems with the grammatical number structure of sentences, too, but this may affect their numerical processing to a lesser extent. Importantly, this finding is not only relevant for the Polish partners, because there are almost 800.000 (as of 2016) Polish people (with exclusively Polish nationality) and about 2 Mio with Polish migration background in Germany (as of 2011). So, even in Germany, this problem may affect many children with Polish (or potentially other Slavic) language background. Since language plays an important role in early number acquisition, our results suggest that the peculiarities of the number word system in other languages should be considered in early numerical training concepts for young children with different migration and language backgrounds. We were really surprised about the relatively consistent failure to obtain grammatical number effects in adults across different experiments. Other linguistic effects have been shown to influence adult number processing, but even when we tried our best to make grammatical number very salient, we did not observe any consistent and reliable grammatical number influences in our project. We are grateful that due to the replication crisis and the rise of Bayesian statistics, it was and hopefully will be possible to publish these null effects. They show that while some linguistic properties influence adult number processing, others don’t. We suggest that a differentiated approach to linguistic influences on number processing is needed. We (H.-C. Nuerk, M. Soltanlou, & K. Cipora) are active scientific Twitter users and share research related content, which greatly increases exposure of and attention to our research. Apart from that we have published two project related papers in Frontiers for Young Minds, which is a popular scientific, open access journal aimed for children. Both these articles (aimed at age groups 8-11) are a part of the collection Everything you and your teachers need to know about the learning brain.
Publications
- (2018). A mental odd-even continuum account: Some numbers may be “more odd” than others and some numbers may be “more even” than others. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:1081
Heubner, L., Cipora, K., Soltanlou, M., Schlenker, M.-L., Lipowska, K., Göbel, S.M., Domahs, F., Haman, M., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01081) - (2019). Automatic placevalue activation in magnitude-irrelevant parity judgement. Psychological Research
Cipora, K., Soltanlou, M., Smaczny, S., Göbel, S.M., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01268-1) - (2019). Individual differences influence two-digit number processing, but not their analog magnitude processing: a large-scale online study. Psychological Research, 83(7), 1444–1464
Huber, S., Nuerk, H.-C., Reips, U.-D., & Soltanlou, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0964-5) - (2019). Syntactic influences on numerical processing in adults: Limited but detectable
Cipora, K., Loenneker, H., Soltanlou, M., Lipowska, K., Domahs, F., Göbel, S. M., Haman, M., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ewtd4) - (2019). The SNARC and MARC effects measured online: Large-scale assessment methods in flexible cognitive effects. Behavior Research Methods, 51(4), 1676-1692
Cipora, K., Soltanlou, M., Reips, U.-D., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01213-5) - (2020). Editorial: On the development of Space-Number Relations: Linguistic and cognitive determinants, influences, and associations. Frontiers in Psychology 11: 182
Cipora, K., Haman, M., Domahs, F, & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00182) - (2020). No Evidence for an Influence of Grammatical Number in Two-Digit Magnitude and Place-Value Processing in Adults
Huber, J. F., Soltanlou, M., Cipora, K., Lipowska, K., Domahs, F., Haman, M., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/9e7jk) - (2020). Pick the smaller number: No influence of linguistic markedness on three-digit number processing
Bahnmueller, J., Cipora, K., Göbel, S. M., Nuerk, H.-C., & Soltanlou, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/nwg7p) - (2020). The plural still counts: Cross-linguistic study of the symbolic numerical magnitude comparison task in Polish and German-speaking preschoolers
Haman, M., Lipowska, K., Soltanlou, M., Cipora, K., Domahs, F., & Nuerk, H.-C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ge8zq)
