A language compatibility effect in fraction processing

Abstract

A language compatibility effect occurs when there is a match between what a language provides and what a mathematical task demands. Here, we investigated whether such an effect exists for fraction processing in English, which names the numerator first, versus Korean, which names the denominator first. We developed two new tasks: a fraction span task where participants view and then recall four fractions and a fraction identification task where they view one fraction and then another and judge whether the two fractions are the same or not. We generally found that English speakers were advantaged when the numerator drove task performance and Korean speakers were advantaged when the denominator was critical. These findings, particularly from the fraction identification task, were inconsistent with the attentional focus hypothesis, which proposes that the serialisation bias of a language guides which fraction component is attended to first. Rather, they were better explained by the verbal encoding hypothesis, which states that a necessary condition for observing language compatibility effects may be that the fraction components must be encoded in verbal working memory and rehearsed there.