Cross-national comparisons of mathematics achievement have shown differences in favour of Asian students. This study examined the idea that the superior mathematics performance of students from Japan, Korea, and China may be due, in part, to differences in cognitive representation of number that is affected by numerical language characteristics differentiating Asian and non-Asian language groups. First-graders from the People's Republic of China, Japan, Korea, France, Sweden, and the United States were asked to construct various numbers using Base 10 blocks. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children showed a preference for using a construction of tens and ones to show numbers; place value appeared to be clearly represented in those constructions. French, Swedish, and US children, in contrast, showed a preference for using a collection of units, suggesting that they represent number as a grouping of counted objects. More Asianlanguage speakers than non-Asian-language speakers were also able to make two correct constructions for each number, which suggests greater flexibility of mental number manipulation. Thus, the unique characteristics of the Asian number language system may facilitate the teaching and learning of mathematics, especially computation, for speakers of those languages.
