Manipulating interword and interletter spacing in cursive script: An eye movements investigation of reading Persian

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language that features a derivation of Arabic cursive script, where most letters within words are connectable to adjacent letters with ligatures. Two experiments are reported where the properties of Persian script were utilized to investigate the effects of reducing interword spacing and increasing the interletter distance (ligature) within a word. Experiment 1 revealed that decreasing interword spacing while extending interletter ligature by the same amount was detrimental to reading speed. Experiment 2 largely replicated these findings. The experiments show that providing the readers with inaccurate word boundary information is detrimental to reading rate. This was achieved by reducing the interword space that follows letters that do not connect to the next letter in Experiment 1, and replacing the interword space with ligature that connected the words in Experiment 2. In both experiments, readers were able to comprehend the text read, despite the considerable costs to reading rates in the experimental conditions

Manipulating Interword and Interletter Spacing in Cursive Script: An Eye Movements Investigation of Reading Persian

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language that features a derivation of Arabic cursive script, where most letters within words are connectable to adjacent letters with ligatures. Two experiments are reported where the properties of Persian script were utilized to investigate the effects of reducing interword spacing and increasing the interletter distance (ligature) within a word. Experiment 1 revealed that decreasing interword spacing while extending interletter ligature by the same amount was detrimental to reading speed. Experiment 2 largely replicated these findings. The experiments show that providing the readers with inaccurate word boundary information is detrimental to reading rate. This was achieved by reducing the interword space that follows letters that do not connect to the next letter in Experiment 1, and replacing the interword space with ligature that connected the words in Experiment 2. In both experiments, readers were able to comprehend the text read, despite the considerable costs to reading rates in the experimental conditions

Insights from the study of Arabic reading

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Current reading models were largely designed to explain findings from experiments of the reading of English and other European languages (Reichle, 2020, Computational models of reading: A handbook). Recent evidence from studies of other languages and writing systems (e.g., Chinese) has demonstrated the need to critically evaluate the assumptions of these models, and whether they are sufficient to explain the full range of findings related to reading, as required, for example, to understand the universal and specific cognitive principles that support reading. In this article, we review the recent behavioural and cognitive-neuroscience research on the reading of Arabic, a world language that until recently has received scant attention despite the fact that its writing system poses fundamental challenges for current models of reading. We also highlight the points of convergence and difference between what has been learned about the reading of Arabic and the reading of another, more widely studied Semitic language, Hebrew. We then discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for existing models of reading

The influence of a word’s number of letters, spatial extent, and initial bigram characteristics on eye movement control during reading: Evidence from Arabic.

We conducted two eye movement experiments in which we used the typographical and linguistic properties of Arabic to disentangle the influences of words’ number of letters and spatial extent on measures of fixation duration and saccade targeting (Experiment 1), and to investigate the influence of initial bigram characteristics on saccade targeting during reading (Experiment 2). In the first experiment, through the use of a proportional font, which is more natural-looking in Arabic compared to monospaced fonts, we manipulated the number of letters (5 versus 7) and the spatial extent (wide versus narrow) of words embedded in frame sentences. The results obtained replicate and expand upon previous findings in other alphabetic languages that the number of letters influences fixation durations, whereas saccade targeting (as indicated by measures of fixation count and probability of skipping and re-fixation) is more influenced by the word’s spatial extent. In the second experiment we compared saccade targeting measures (saccade amplitude and initial fixation location) in 6- and 7- letter words beginning with initial bigrams that were of extremely high frequency (?? the), relatively high frequency (?? to/for the), or beginning with the letters of the word stem. Our results showed negligible modulation of saccade targeting by initial bigram characteristics. The results also highlighted the importance of selecting the appropriate measures of initial fixation location (spatial versus character-based measures) during reading text rendered using proportional fonts

Parafoveal processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information during reading Arabic: A boundary paradigm investigation

Evidence shows that skilled readers extract information about upcoming words in the parafovea. Using the boundary paradigm, we investigated native Arabic readers\u27 processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information available parafoveally. Target words were embedded in frame sentences, and prior to readers fixating them, one of the following previews were made available: (a) Identity preview; (b) Preview that shared the pattern morpheme with the target; (c) Preview that shared the root morpheme with the target; (d) Preview that was a synonym with the target word; (e) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a new root, while preserving all letter identities of the target; (f) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a pronounceable pseudo root, while also preserving all letter identities of the target; and (g) Previews that was unrelated to the target word and shared no information with it. The results showed that identity, root-preserving, and synonymous preview conditions yielded preview benefit. On the other hand, no benefit was obtained from the pattern-preserving previews, and significant disruption to processing was obtained from the previews that contained transposed root letters, particularly when this letter transposition created a new real root. The results thus reflect Arabic readers\u27 dependance on morphological and semantic information, and suggest that these levels of representation are accessed as early as orthographic information. Implications for theory- and model-building, and the need to accommodate early morphological and semantic processing activities in more comprehensive models are further discussed. Copyright

Processing of Arabic Diacritical Marks: : Phonological-Syntactic Disambiguation of Homographic Verbs and Visual Crowding Effects

Diacritics convey vowel sounds in Arabic, allowing accurate word pronunciation. Mostly, modern Arabic is printed non-diacritised. Otherwise, diacritics appear either only on homographic words when not disambiguated by surrounding text or on all words as in religious or educational texts. In an eye tracking experiment we examined sentence processing in the absence of diacritics, and when diacritics were presented in either modes. Heterophonic-homographic target verbs that have different pronunciations in active and passive (e.g., برض /daraba/, hit; برض /doriba/, was hit) were embedded in temporarily ambiguous sentences where in the absence of diacritics, readers cannot be certain whether the verb was active or passive. Passive sentences were disambiguated by an extra word (e.g., ديب /bijad/, by the hand of). Our results show that readers processed the disambiguating diacritics when present only on the homographic verb. When disambiguating diacritics were absent, Arabic readers followed their parsing preference for active verb analysis, and garden path effects were observed. When reading fully diacritised sentences, readers incurred only a small cost, likely due to increased visual crowding, but did not extensively process the (mostly superfluous) diacritics, thus resulting in a lack of benefit from the disambiguating diacritics on the passive verb

Internal/external frame of reference model and dimensional comparison theory: a novel exploration of their applicability among Arab high school students

This study aims at testing the generalisability of Marsh’s Internal/External (I/E) frame of reference model as well as its Dimensional Comparison Theory (DCT) extension in a sample of United Arab Emirates (UAE) high school students. Relationship between self-concept and achievement in Arabic, English and mathematics were explored. A sample of 990 students (532 girls; age 13–20) participated in this research. Arabic, English and maths self-concepts from the Self-Description Questionnaire were used. Results revealed positive paths between the same domains for achievement and self-concept and negative paths cross-domains. Significant negative paths were also found between English and Arabic, suggesting that languages sharing the same alphabet/characters could belong to the same ‘family’ and be considered as a near path, while languages from different families could be a far path. Differences in achievement were in favour of girls, although boys presented higher maths self-concept

Orthographic and root frequency effects in Arabic: Evidence from eye movements and lexical decision

One of the more studied and robust effects in the reading literature is that of word frequency. Semitic words (e.g., in Arabic or Hebrew) contain roots that indicate the core meaning to which the word belongs. The effects of the frequency of these roots on reading as measured by eye movements is much less understood. In a series of experiments, we investigated and replicated traditional word frequency effects in Arabic: Eye movement measures showed the expected facilitation for high- over low-frequency target words embedded in sentences (Experiment 1). The same was found in response time and accuracy in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 3a). Using target words that were matched on overall orthographic frequency and other important variables but that contained either high- or low-frequency roots, we found no significant influence of root frequency on eye movement measures during sentence reading (Experiment 2). Using the same target words in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 3b), we replicated the absence of root frequency effects on real Arabic word processing. At 1st glance, the results may not appear to be in line with theoretical accounts that postulate early morphological decomposition and root identification when processing Semitic words. However, these results are compatible with accounts where morphological decomposition does occur but is followed by recombination, and under certain conditions recombination costs can eliminate or even reverse root frequency effects. (PsycINFO Database Record [Abstract copyright: (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Food Consumption Frequency, Perceived Stress, and Depressive Symptoms Among Female University Students in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

This study assessed whether perceived stress and depressive symptoms were associated with the frequency of consumption of specific food groups among female university students. A cross-sectional study was conducted among female university students using a simple random sampling method. The response rate was 97%, with a total number of 385 participants. The associations between stress levels and most/least-consumed food groups, and between depressive symptoms levels and most/least-consumed food groups were assessed. The questionnaire included a 12-item self-administered food frequency questionnaire, Cohen\u27s Perceived Stress Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. The study was approved by the University Ethical Committee prior to the data collection. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and an independent-sample t-test were performed to test the equality of population means across the categories of each independent variable depending on the number of categories of the independent variable. Overall, this group of female university students fell under the mild mood disturbance category (depressive symptoms) (BDI-II) and had moderate perceived stress (PSS). Perceived stress was associated with more frequent consumption of salad/raw vegetables and cooked vegetables and less frequent consumption of cake/cookies and meat/sausage products (p \u3c 0.05). Additionally, depressive symptoms were associated with less frequent consumption of fresh fruits and increased consumption of fast food/canned food and soft drinks (p \u3c 0.05). The data showed that stress and depression were associated with different dietary preferences, which is consistent with the distinctions between stress and depression in human behavior. Specifically, the results revealed associations between soft drinks consumption and higher depressive symptoms and between frequent consumption of salad/raw vegetables and cooked vegetables and higher perceived stress among this group of female university students

Nonattachment as a Mediator of the Mindfulness-Well-being Relationship: Comparing Emirati and Australian Students

ObjectivesFew studies have explored mindfulness and nonattachment in Arab populations. This study extends our understanding of mindfulness and nonattachment to Arab students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) based on the 20-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the 7-item Nonattachment Scale (NAS-7). This study investigated the model fit of each measure, in conjunction with examining the measurement invariance of both measures across Emirati and Australian samples. Next, this study investigated the mediating role of nonattachment.MethodsUniversity students from the UAE (N = 452) and Australia (N = 731) completed self-report measures of mindfulness, nonattachment, positive and negative affect, and depression, stress, and anxiety.ResultsFor the FFMQ, a four-factor model—excluding the facet Observe but with the addition of covariance between two items from the facet Describe—provided adequate fit in both samples. The NAS-7 provided adequate fit in the Australian sample but not the UAE. While the FFMQ model was invariant across samples, the NAS-7 was non-invariant, thus preventing sample comparison. Overall, nonattachment partially mediated the relationship between mindfulness and well-being with differences across samples.ConclusionsFindings support the use of a four-factor model of the FFMQ in Emirati samples and attest to its robustness and suitability as a measure for cross-cultural comparisons. Findings also support a partial mediating role for nonattachment and attest to the intricacies of the Emirati culture