Student Research Guide WQ25/ Cognitive Effects of Numeral Systems

• Learning a numeral system is crucial for developing a mental model of exact numbers
• Place-value numeral systems are both much more suitable for calculation and currently the best kind
• The Hindu-Arabic numeral system popularized place-value numeral systems

Advice for Future Research:

Among the databases in the SVC library: ProQuest, Academic Search Complete, and JSTOR are the most useful to the topic. The combination of psychology, education, history, and mathematics makes more specific databases less relevant. The first two contain more recent articles than the last. However, numeral systems change slowly with time, so older articles are still relevant.

When selecting keywords, a general search is more useful than a specific one. Modifiers that narrow the search like "AND," will often limit the number of results to be very few and of little relevance. By approaching the search from a general perspective, more relevant articles appear from across the disciplines. Even with this approach, the search should narrow to only a few hundred articles or less, so it does not take too much time to check through them. Naturally, if a search does return too many results then narrowing options ought to be used, but using them first is counter productive.

Reflection on Research Experience:

The greatest difficulty to the research was finding enough relevant sources. Because the topic is so narrow, there are relatively few relevant articles compared to other subjects in the databases. Furthermore, internet searches will give results, but not many of those will be of a scholarly nature for this topic. Books were a great resource, but took much more time to read.

The most interesting part of the topic was reading articles on cognitive psychology. These brought the topic to life compared just reading the historical developments. When numeral systems are mentioned it is often the Hindu-Arabic system due to its prevalence. However, there are some mentions of other numeral systems. Furthermore, some articles go beyond numeral systems and cover different number systems as well.

Unfortunately, there were not many articles that advocated for any other kind of numeral system. When it did come up, the subject was typically centered on the suitability of base-10. The suggestion of another base for a numeral system was interesting, but not compelling enough to drive the point forward.