ABSTRACT
Transcoding processes constitute a very large class of cognitive activities that transform a form presented in one code into another code. From a cognitive point of view, the transcoding algorithms can be divided into two main classes. One that requires a semantic interpretation of the quantity represented in the source code followed by an encoding of the semantic formulae in the target code. Another that simply produces the form in the target code by the procedural application of a set of rewriting rules to the lexical primitives found in the source code form. For instance, incongruence between the physical size of number symbols and their values was shown to affect numerical comparative judgments with digital but not with alphabetical English forms, which was replicated by Takahashi and Green, who observed an interference effect with the Japanese ideographic script but not with syllabic script.
