ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRESENTATION FORMAT ON ARITHMETICAL-FACT RETRIEVAL-PROCESSES

This article presents the results of two experiments. In Experiment 1, French-speaking participants were asked first to retrieve the product of two numbers presented in Arabic or verbal code, and then to perfor m a number-matching task on the same material to assess the encoding t ime difference between numerals in the two formats. Experiment 2 invol ved the same multiplication task with Dutch-speaking participants who name two-diet numbers in reverse order. The format effects obtained by Campbell and Clark (1992); Campbell (1994) for multiplication were re plicated. However, several observations suggest that some of these eff ects may be due to encoding time differences between word and digit nu merals. The same size-by-format interaction was found for the number-m atching task as for the multiplication task, and the effect disappeare d with practice in the multiplication task. Finally, despite the fact that the linguistic structure of number names differs between French a nd Dutch, the types of error produced in both groups were identical. T he last result does not match with the hypothesis that operand intrusi on errors are due to interference between reading processes and arithm etical-fact retrieval processes. Implications of these findings for th e debate about the nature of arithmetical-fact retrieval are discussed .