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 from indirect sources such as number comparison tasks and findings on acquired dyscalculia. Researchers have rarely looked at the processing times of individual numbers. The experiments described in this article indicate that this neglect may have been unwarranted because number reading 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 magnitude, the frequency of the number, and sometimes the syllable length of the number name. In addition, processing a number facilitates the processing of a subsequent number with a close value. The effects of number 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 numerical representation has been accessed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)