Differential language effects on numerical skills in second grade

Little is known about the causes of cross-cultural specifics of numerical development. The authors examined effects of inversion (a linguistic effect) on three different numerical tasks in 220 second graders from France, Wallonia, Flanders, Germany, and Austria tested for the standardization of the dyscalculia test TEDI-MATH. Results revealed that performance differences between countries are only partly attributable to language effects, but group differences in recognition of unit- and decade-digits and subtraction are more likely due to curricular effects. As expected, language effects due to the inversion principle could be observed in writing Arabic numbers to dictation affecting performance both specifically as well as in a generalized way being present in different error types. These results clearly show that numerical skills do not develop in a unitary fashion and that cross-cultural differences can be due to several factors.