I've just set up 9 different test galleries (all setting screenMode="LARGE"), using all combinations of showPagingText (not set, TRUE and FALSE) and showSmallPagingText (not set, TRUE and FALSE).
I then viewed all 9 galleries in Mobile Safari, Chrome 56 and Firefox 6.0 on an iPod Touch 6 running iOS 10.2.1.
All results were as expected: the thumbnail paging text displayed only in those galleries which set showPagingText="TRUE".
The value of showSmallPagingText (or its existance as a configuration option at all) did not make a difference to any of the galleries (which is expected as screenMode="LARGE").
I've tried but I really can't replicate the problem you're describing.
Maybe what you were seeing was a result of a caching issue (either client or server-side) and your browser was using an older cached version of your gallery's 'config.xml' file (with different settings).
If you do find a gallery which displays the thumbnail paging text unexpectedly (or does not show it when it should), please post a link to the gallery in question and let me know what device and browser you see the problem in.
Thank you.