Does diacritics-based lexical disambiguation modulate word frequency, length, and predictability effects? An eye-movements investigation of processing Arabic diacritics.

In Arabic, a predominantly consonantal script that features a high incidence of lexical ambiguity (heterophonic homographs), glyph-like marks called diacritics supply vowel information that clarifies how each consonant should be pronounced, and thereby disambiguate the pronunciation of consonantal strings. Diacritics are typically omitted from print except in situations where a particular homograph is not sufficiently disambiguated by the surrounding context. In three experiments we investigated whether the presence of disambiguating diacritics on target homographs modulates word frequency, length, and predictability effects during reading.

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' 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.

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.

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.

What's in a Typeface? Evidence of the Existence of Print Personalities in Arabic.

Previous research suggests that different typefaces can be perceived as having distinct personality characteristics (such as strength, elegance, friendliness, romance, and humor) and that these "print personalities" elicit information in the reader that is in addition to the meaning conveyed linguistically by words. However, research in this area has previously been conducted using only English stimuli and so it may be that typefaces in English, and other languages using the Latinate alphabet, lend themselves unusually well to eliciting perception of print personalities, and the phenomenon is not a language universal. But not all written languages are Latinate languages, and one language that is especially visually distinct is Arabic.

Reading Rate and Comprehension for Text Presented on Tablet and Paper: Evidence from Arabic.

The effectiveness of tablet computers to supplement or replace paper-based text in everyday life has yet to be fully revealed. Previous investigations comparing reading performance using tablets and paper have, however, reported inconsistent results. Furthermore, the interpretability of some previous findings is limited by lack of experimental control over variables like text display conditions.

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

The authors conducted 2 eye movement experiments in which they 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, the authors manipulated the number of letters (5 vs. 7) and the spatial extent (wide vs.

Parafoveal processing of Arabic diacritical marks.

Diacritics are glyph-like marks on letters that convey vowel information in Arabic, thus allowing for accurate pronunciation and disambiguation of homographs. For skilled readers, diacritics are usually omitted except when their omission causes ambiguity. Undiacritized homographs are very common in Arabic and are predominantly heterophones (where each meaning sounds different), with 1 version more common (dominant) than the others (subordinate).

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 nondiacritized. Otherwise, diacritics appear either only on homographic words when not disambiguated by surrounding text or on all words as in religious or educational texts.

Receptive vocabulary and semantic knowledge in children with SLI and children with Down syndrome.

Receptive vocabulary and associated semantic knowledge were compared within and between groups of children with specific language impairment (SLI), children with Down syndrome (DS), and typically developing children. To overcome the potential confounding effects of speech or language difficulties on verbal tests of semantic knowledge, a novel task was devised based on picture-based semantic association tests used to assess adult patients with semantic dementia. Receptive vocabulary, measured by word-picture matching, of children with SLI was weak relative to chronological age and to nonverbal mental age but their semantic knowledge, probed across the same lexical items, did not differ significantly from that of vocabulary-matched typically developing children.