Number transcoding (e.g., writing 64 when hearing “sixty-four”) is a basic numerical skill; rather faultlessly performed in adults, but difficult for children. In the present study, children speaking Dutch (an inversed number language) and French (a non-inversed number language) wrote Arabic digits to dictation. We also tested their IQ and their phonological, visuospatial, and executive working memory. Although the number of transcoding errors (e.g., hearing 46 but writing 56) was equal in both groups, the number of inversion errors (e.g., hearing 46 but writing 64) was significantly higher in Dutch-speaking than in French-speaking children. Regression analyses confirmed that language was the only significant predictor of inversion errors. Working-memory components, in contrast, were the only significant predictors of transcoding errors. Executive resources were important in all children. Less-skilled transcoders also differed from more-skilled transcoders in that they used semantic rather than asemantic transcoding routes. Given the observed relation between number transcoding and mathematics grades, current findings may provide useful information for educational and clinical settings.

Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, language selection must occur on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. SpanishCatalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarised with certain faces and their corresponding language during simulated Skype conversations. Afterwards, they carried out a language production task, in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces on screen. Participants produced words faster when they had to respond to familiar faces speaking the same language as previously in the Skype simulation, compared to the same face speaking the unexpected language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutor was actually a bilingual. This suggests that faces can prime a language, but their cueing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cue.

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In a recent issue of Consciousness and Cognition, Filbrich, Torta, Vanderclausen, Azanon, and Legrain (2016) commented on a paper in which we used a tactile Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ) task to show that expecting pain on a specific body location biased attention to that location (Vanden Bulcke, Crombez, Durnez, & Van Damme, 2015). Their main criticism is that the effects are likely to reflect response bias rather than genuine attentional bias. We agree that the TOJ task used may be susceptible to response bias, and welcome the authors' methodological suggestions to control for such bias. However, we feel that certain aspects of our work are misrepresented in their paper. Most importantly, we contest their argument that our instructions made the threat location task-relevant, thereby increasing risk of response bias. Further, we reply to other methodological and theoretical issues raised by these authors.

Previous research has revealed that anticipating pain at a particular location of the body prioritizes somatosensory input presented there. The present study tested whether the spatial features of bodily threat are limited to the exact location of nociception. Participants judged which one of two tactile stimuli, presented to either hand, had been presented first, while occasionally experiencing a painful stimulus. The distance between the pain and tactile locations was manipulated. In Experiment 1, participants expected pain either proximal to one of the tactile stimuli (on the hand; near condition) or more distant on the same body part (arm; far condition). In Experiment 2, the painful stimulus was expected either proximal to one of the tactile stimuli (hand; near) or on a different body-part at the same body side (leg; far). The results revealed that in the near condition of both experiments, participants became aware of tactile stimuli presented to the "threatened" hand more quickly as compared to the "neutral" hand. Of particular interest, the data in the far conditions showed a similar prioritization effect when pain was expected at a different location of the same body part, as well as when pain was expected at a different body part at the same body side. In this study the encoding of spatial features of bodily threat was not limited to the exact location where pain was anticipated, but rather generalized to the entire body part and even to different body parts at the same side of the body.