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Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task
Published on: February 26, 2020
Number comparison in bilinguals is not affected by their second language
Silke M Göbel1,2, Veniamin Shiron3, Miriam Tucker3
1Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK. silke.goebel@york.ac.uk.
Scientific Reports
|July 9, 2026
Summary
Bilinguals' language background did not affect number comparison with Arabic digits. Activating either German or English did not change the compatibility effect in number comparison tasks.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Numerical Cognition
Background:
- Language background can subtly influence numerical cognition, even when processing Arabic digits.
- Number comparison involves a compatibility effect, where decade-unit compatibility influences response times.
- This compatibility effect is reportedly larger in languages with number word inversion, like German.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of language background on the numerical compatibility effect in bilingual individuals.
- To compare the compatibility effect in German monolinguals and German-English bilinguals.
- To examine if language activation (German vs. English) affects the compatibility effect within bilinguals.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Compared the compatibility effect in German monolinguals and German-English bilinguals during number comparison tasks.
- Experiment 2: German-English bilinguals performed number comparison tasks after activating either English or German by describing scenes.
- Measured response times and accuracy to assess the compatibility effect and language switching costs.
Main Results:
- A significant compatibility effect was observed in both monolingual and bilingual groups.
- No significant differences in the compatibility effect were found between German monolinguals and German-English bilinguals.
- While language switching incurred a cost, activating German or English did not significantly alter the size of the compatibility effect.
Conclusions:
- A bilingual's language background does not appear to influence the compatibility effect in number comparison with Arabic digits.
- Language activation within bilinguals does not modulate the magnitude of the numerical compatibility effect.
- Arabic digit processing in number comparison tasks seems robust to language background and activation effects in bilinguals.
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