Language-Switching Costs in Bilingual Mathematics Learning

by Christian Hahn
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2019-06-19
Date of issue:2019-07-03
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Roland Grabner
Referee:Prof. Dr. Roland Grabner
Referee:Prof. Dr. Sascha Schroeder
Referee:Prof. Dr. Hendrik, Saalbach
Persistent Address: http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-7530

 

 

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Abstract

English

Given the increasing number of bilingual education programs in Europe and beyond, the question if knowledge is represented in a language-dependent way has gained high practical importance. First studies revealed that content learned in one language will be retrieved and applied more slowly and less accurate when participants have to switch the language from instruction to testing (i.e., language-switching costs, LSC). In three studies, we investigated to what extent LSC are a function of the arithmetic operation as well as the kind of knowledge. Further, we investigated the underlying cognitive mechanisms. In Study 1 and 2, participants acquired arithmetic facts of three different operations over a period of four days. In Study 3, participants acquired a novel procedure and facts. Participants were tested in the trained and untrained language while measuring response latency and accuracy as well as collecting strategy reports. The project is the first to a) find LSC using auditory stimuli and for data collection via voice-key, b) show that the number of trials for which participants reported to translate numbers before responding significantly predicted the size of the individual LSC, c) reveal that LSC mainly appear for pure arithmetic fact retrieval, not for a trained procedure, and d) indicate that individual differences in language-proficiency, intelligence profile, and math fluency are unrelated to the size of LSC. The implications of these findings for (bilingual) mathematics learning and cognition will be discussed.
Keywords: bilingual learning; mathematics; fact knowledge; language-switching costs; arithmetic
 
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