Do we access meaning when we name Arabic digits? Electrophysiological evidence

Phonological activation improves semantic access provided by Arabic digits and number words

Arabic digits (e.g., "6") and number words (e.g., "", "six", " ") are the two main formats in which numbers can be represented. Although phonology plays a crucial role in the semantic accessing of alphabetic words and Chinese characters, whether it is involved in the processing of different numerical notations, which have been shown to be dissociable from characters, is still unknown. Using a parity judgment task, two experiments were performed by manipulating the phonological relationship between a prime and a target. The primes were Tibetan or Chinese characters and the targets were presented either as number words (Experiment 1) or as Arabic digits (Experiment 2). The results revealed that phonology affected semantic access for both number words and Arabic digits. Additionally, semantic access for Tibetan number words was more susceptible to phonological information. The results for Arabic digits followed the same pattern for Tibetan primes. Further, language proficiency also affected the role of phonology in number processing. Participants with low language proficiency relied more on phonological encoding when processing the numbers. The results suggest that phonology is crucial for semantic access of different numerical notations.

Multilingual two-digit number naming: The influence of composition rules on language switching

The aim of this study was to examine language switching in a two-digit number naming task. In contrast to single digits, two-digit numbers have a composition rule (i.e., morphological configuration) that may differ between languages. For example, the Arabic number 21 is read with an inverted composition rule in German (unit before decade) and a non-inverted composition rule in English (decade before unit). In the present experiment, one group of German native speakers and one group of Spanish native speakers had to name two-digit numbers in German, English, or Spanish. The results demonstrate a language-switch cost, revealing better performance in language repetition than in language-switch trials. This switch cost was further modulated by repeating or switching the composition rule, since the language repetition benefit (i.e., the switch cost) was reduced in trials with composition-rule switches compared with trials with composition-rule repetitions. This finding indicates that the language in which the number word has to be produced and its composition rule are not switched independently but rather may be integrated into one language schema.