Does the way your language says numbers change how you compare them?
German speakers, whose number words put units before tens, compared three-digit numbers in the same way as English speakers, suggesting that the language quirk that affects two-digit numbers does not carry over to three-digit numbers in adults.
Source
On the limits of language influences on numerical cognition - no inversion effects in three-digit number magnitude processing in adults
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Within-subject magnitude comparison of three-digit number pairs with hundred-decade and hundred-unit compatibility and digit distances manipulated orthogonally, plus a between-subject language factor (German vs English)
- N
- N=51 · Twenty-five native German speakers and 28 native English speakers were tested; one participant per group was excluded for error rates above 10%, leaving the analysed sample.
- Population
- Native German-speaking students (University of Tübingen) and native English-speaking students (University of York), young adults
- Outcome
- Reaction time for correctly choosing the larger of two three-digit numbers; hundred-decade and hundred-unit compatibility effects and their interaction with language
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
German says 372 as 'three hundred two-and-seventy', so the units digit is spoken before the tens, whereas English keeps the written order. German and English-speaking students repeatedly picked the larger of two three-digit numbers shown on screen. The researchers built a new, carefully matched set of 640 number pairs, varying whether the tens and the units digits pointed to the same answer as the hundreds digit (compatible) or the opposite one (incompatible), and how far apart each pair of digits was.
What they found
Both groups were slower when the irrelevant tens or units pointed the wrong way: incompatible units slowed responses by 27 ms and incompatible tens by 14 ms on average, showing that all digits are processed in parallel even though only the hundreds decide the answer. Language did not interact with any of these effects, and Bayesian analysis gave positive evidence for no language difference. Contrary to an earlier English study, the units effect was descriptively larger than the tens effect in both groups, which argues against strict left-to-right processing.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The samples were small, and the authors acknowledge that a small language effect might appear with more participants; the Bayesian evidence for the null is positive but not overwhelming. The two groups came from different universities and countries, so language is confounded with culture, education and testing site. The study tests only adults on a comparison task, so it cannot say whether inversion affects children, other tasks such as transcoding or arithmetic, or four- and five-digit numbers. The lateral-masking account of the larger units effect is a post-hoc suggestion that was not tested.
Key terms
- Number word inversion
- A property of languages such as German and Dutch in which the units are spoken before the tens (e.g. 'seven-and-twenty' for 27), reversing the written digit order.
- Compatibility effect
- Slower or less accurate responses when a decision-irrelevant digit comparison points to the opposite answer from the decisive digit, showing that the irrelevant digit was processed.
- Hundred-unit compatibility
- Whether comparing the hundreds digits and comparing the units digits of two three-digit numbers give the same answer (compatible) or opposite answers (incompatible).
- Parallel decomposed processing
- The idea that the separate digits of a multi-digit number are processed at the same time as distinct magnitudes, rather than the number being read as one whole.
- Bayesian evidence for the null
- A statistical approach that estimates how probable it is that there is no effect given the data, rather than just failing to find a significant effect.
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Quiz yourself
Why might German speakers be expected to show more interference from the units digit in three-digit numbers?
Common questions
If language affects two-digit numbers, why not three-digit ones?
In German three-digit number words the hundreds digit keeps its written position; only tens and units swap. The authors conclude that inversion interference seems limited to the inverted digits themselves and does not spill over to the hundreds.
Why were the new stimuli important?
In the earlier English study, pairs where tens were compatible also had larger overall numerical distances, which could inflate the tens effect. Matching distance removed this confound and changed the pattern of results.
Does this show language never affects number processing?
No. It shows a limit: language effects may depend on age, task and number range, and children may still show them because they verbalise numbers more.
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