ARABIC NUMBER READING - ON THE NATURE OF THE NUMERICAL SCALE AND THE ORIGIN OF PHONOLOGICAL RECODING

Models of human number representation are based mainly on evidence fro m indirect sources such as number comparison tasks and findings on acq uired dyscalculia. Researchers have rarely looked at the processing ti mes of individual numbers. The experiments described in this article i ndicate that this neglect may have been unwarranted because number rea ding times considerably constrain the range of acceptable theoretical models. In particular, it is found that the time to process an Arabic integer from 1 to 99 is a function of the logarithm of the number magn itude, the frequency of the number, and sometimes the syllable length of the number name. In addition, processing a number facilitates the p rocessing of a subsequent number with a close value. The effects of nu mber magnitude and number priming are found for number naming as well, indicating that phonological recoding in silent reading (as evidenced by the syllable-length effect) happens after the internal semantic nu merical representation has been accessed.