Alhaider, Rima; Mahon, Merle; Donlan, Chris; (2024) The influence of language on the formation of number concepts: evidence from preschool children who are bilingual in English and Arabic. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 246 , Article 105988. 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105988.

Text Mahon_Alhaider et al_ Final JECP Submission.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 20 June 2025. Download (686kB)

Abstract

We asked whether grammatical number marking has specific influence on the formation of early number concepts. In particular, does comprehension of dual case marking support young children's understanding of cardinality? We assessed number knowledge in 77 3-year-old Arabic-English bilingual children using the Give-a-Number task in both languages. Given recent concerns around the administration and scoring of the Give-a-Number task, we used two complementary approaches: one based on conceptual levels and the other based on overall test scores. We also tested comprehension of dual case marking in Arabic and number sequence knowledge in both languages. Regression analyses showed that dual case comprehension exerts a strong influence on cardinality tested in Arabic independent of age, general language skills, and number sequence knowledge. No such influence was found for cardinality tested in English, indicating a language-specific effect. Further analyses tested for transfer of cardinality knowledge between languages. These revealed, in addition to the findings outlined above, a powerful cross-linguistic transfer effect. Our findings are consistent with a model in which the direct effect of dual case marking is language specific, but concepts, once acquired, may be represented abstractly and transferred between languages.

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