Visual and orthographic processing in Arabic word
Journal of Research in Reading
In Arabic, auxiliary verbs are necessary in the written language, but absent from the oral langua... more In Arabic, auxiliary verbs are necessary in the written language, but absent from the oral language. This is contrary to languages such as English and French in which auxiliary verbs are mandatory in both written and oral languages. This fact was exploited to examine if dissociation between written and oral forms affects reading measures like letter detection task and therefore to validate the phenomenon of the missing-letter effect (MLE) and to replicate previous studies. In addition, the study examined whether auxiliary verbs in Arabic are considered as functional elements that constitute part of the structural frame. Sixty native Arabic speakers read a passage while looking for a target letter that was embedded in a preposition, an auxiliary verb or a content word. Results showed the typical MLE with more omissions for the preposition than for the content words. However, the results with the auxiliary verb are less clear. The functional and the syntactic roles of auxiliary verbs in Arabic are discussed. Investigation of reading processes in languages other than English is clearly under-represented in main journals. A number of studies were conducted in the last two decades in an attempt to examine possible sources of slowness in reading acquisition 1 of Arabic, in relation to some other languages. The first source is related to the psycholinguistic basis of diglossia in Arabic and to the literate Arabic speaker being de facto bilingual (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2001; Ibrahim & Aharon-Peretz, 2005; Ibrahim, Eviatar & Aharon-Peretz, 2007). The second source stems from the relationship between the Arabic orthographic system and cognitive processes that might be involved during word recognition. In particular, studies in this area focused on the specific characteristics of Arabic orthography and the ways these characteristics may influence the acquisition of
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ABSTRACT לפיתוח מיומנויות חשבוניות ישנה חשיבות רבה בחברה בה אנו חיים, ומכאן החשיבות הרבה של חקירת... more ABSTRACT לפיתוח מיומנויות חשבוניות ישנה חשיבות רבה בחברה בה אנו חיים, ומכאן החשיבות הרבה של חקירת הסיבות העומדות בבסיס הצלחה וכישלון ברכישת יכולות מתמטיות. בדרך כלל קשיים ברכישת מיומנויות אלו נובעים מלקות למידה בחשבון (דיסקלקוליה), ועל כן עולה הצורך במתן הגדרה ללקות, אפיוניה, ובאפיון הפונקציות והאזורים הקוגניטיביים המעורבים. מאפיינים שונים של השפה נמצאו כבעלי השפעה על רכישת יכולות מתמטיות; תופעת הדיגלוסיה – פער בין השפה הדבורה לכתובה – היא אחד ממאפייני השפה הערבית, ובמאמר תיבחן השפעתה על רכישת מיומנויות מתמטיות בקרב ילדים דוברי השפה. עיון בספרות המקצועית מצביע על כך שהמחקר בנושא רכישת הקריאה עולה בהיקפו על המחקר בנושא רכישת מיומנויות חשבוניות. יחד עם זאת, בשנים האחרונות מתעוררת ההתעניינות וניכרת עלייה בחקירת תחום זה (Dowker, 2005), וכיום זמין מידע רחב וחשוב אודות לקויות במיומנויות אלו. אולם, בהקשר של תופעת הדיגלוסיה כמעט ולא נמצאו מחקרים על האופן בו דוברי השפה הילידים רגילים לקרוא, והשפעתו על היכולת לחישוב נומרי (חישוב מספרים).
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ABSTRACT This chapter addresses the relationship between learned behaviors and genetic functional... more ABSTRACT This chapter addresses the relationship between learned behaviors and genetic functional architecture in the area of speech perception and production in the context of speaking and listening in second language by beginning and skilled bilinguals (Ibrahim, Eviatar and Leikin, 2008; Leikin, Ibrahim, Eviatar and Sapir, 2009). These studies are based on a case study of a bilingual aphasic patients who showed differential performance patterns in 1st and 2nd language (see, Eviatar, Leikin, and Ibrahim,1999). In the first part, the hypothesis related to foreign languages processing and its relation to measure of ego permeability will be discussed. Specifically, the focus will be on the correlations between the ‘heaviness’ of the accent of foreign language speakers and a measure of empathy as it was examined by Ibrahim and his associates. In the second part, I will try to answer the question "how native and non-native speaking listeners perceive accented and native-accented speech". This cross-sectional study that confirmed and extended previous models in the literature and implications of these findings is discussed.
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Before focusing on the vowelization system in Arabic and Hebrew, a theoretical background will be... more Before focusing on the vowelization system in Arabic and Hebrew, a theoretical background will be presented about vowels in alphabetic writing systems in general. When the first alphabet was created a few thousand years ago, it contained only consonants—no vowels at all (Shimron 1993). Vowels were added 1,000 years later by the Greeks. The main consideration behind this addition was to represent spoken words in a more comprehensive manner in consonantal homographs, and also to represent phonemes of the spoken words more completely (Shimron 1993). Vowels can strengthen the graphemes-phonemes relationship but can never make it perfect, because the relation between the latter and the sound is not always one-on-one. A letter by itself may represent more than one sound just as one sound can represent more than one specific letter (e.g. Taylor 1980).
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ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the process of reading acquisition in Arabic by beginni... more ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the process of reading acquisition in Arabic by beginning readers is more challenging and might be slower than in other languages (Saiegh-Haddad, 2003). Furthermore, recent study showed that reading in Arabic is slower than reading in other languages, even among skilled native Arabic speakers (Azzam, 1984; Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2004; Abu-Rabia, 2001). This chapter summerize the role of short-term memory, represented by Working Memory (WM) measures in developmental reading problems, considering: 1) The unique contribution of WM to reading in language that has a unique and complex structure, Arabic; 2) Domain-general or -specific explanations of decoding and reading difficulties. Specifically, the chapter tries to explain whether a supra-lexical factor (working memory), affects meta-lingual performance, which is critical for the development of reading skill in Arabic language readers; and whether this effect differs with age, from 1st through 12th grade of school. Based on recent published studies (Ibrahim, 2011; Abu-Ahamad, Ibrahim & Share, 2011), short-term memory was found to be involved in and affect phonemic manipulations at all grade levels: the longer the manipulated stimulus, the poorer the performance. The implications of these findings in addition to other aspects of the related issue are discussed.
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Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, Jun 21, 2012
ABSTRACT The current study explores sentence comprehension impairments among adults following mod... more ABSTRACT The current study explores sentence comprehension impairments among adults following moderate closed head injury. It was hypothesized that if the factor of syntactic complexity significantly affects sentence comprehension in these patients, it would testify to the existence of syntactic processing deficit along with working-memory problems. Thirty-six adults (18 closed head injury patients and 18 healthy controls matched in age, gender, and IQ) participated in the study. A picture-sentence matching task together with various tests for memory, language, and reading abilities were used to explore whether sentence comprehension impairments exist as a result of a deficit in syntactic processing or of working-memory dysfunction. Results indicate significant impairment in sentence comprehension among adults with closed head injury compared with their non-head-injured peers. Results also reveal that closed head injury patients demonstrate considerable decline in working memory, short-term memory, and semantic knowledge. Analysis of the results shows that memory impairment and syntactic complexity contribute significantly to sentence comprehension difficulties in closed head injury patients. At the same time, the presentation mode (spoken or written language) was found to have no effect on comprehension among adults with closed head injury, and their reading abilities appear to be relatively intact.
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Journal of Advances in Linguistics, Dec 7, 2014
ABSTRACT This study explores how cultural disposition and education impact the ways individuals a... more ABSTRACT This study explores how cultural disposition and education impact the ways individuals assimilate and organize information. Students from two cultural backgrounds (individualist, collectivist) and three levels of education (elementary school, high school and university) were tested in two experiments. Findings from Experiment 1, which used a short-term memory (STM) paradigm, revealed that, contrary to a widely held theory, culture per se does not seem to foster propensities toward the use of particular memory strategies. Experiment 2, which used a concept organization paradigm, suggests that, even if cultural/educational preferences bias individuals’ approach to information in some regards, such bias is overshadowed by and interacts with other more intuitive predispositions. Findings are discussed from a cultural and educational point of view.
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Current Issues in Bilingualism, 2011
ABSTRACT Theoretical and empirical aspects of the cognitive and neural bases of the language stat... more ABSTRACT Theoretical and empirical aspects of the cognitive and neural bases of the language status and language experience are discussed. We chose to compare reading performance in Arabic, Hebrew and English in order to clarify if the difference in performance is due to native language reading strategies or to native language structure. This section will be divided into two parts. In the first part we discuss the diglossia in Arabic in which the two forms of Arabic language (Spoken Arabic-SA and Literary Arabic-LA) may be considered as two forms of one. The findings on the relationships between the two forms of Arabic to the relations existing between LA and Hebrew using semantic and repetition priming techniques will be presented. In further study, we discuss if Arab children evince the metalinguistic abilities that have been found to characterize bilingual children and how these abilities affect reading acquisition. In related issue, we discuss the perceptual processes involved in the recognition of Arabic letters compared to Hebrew letters. In this discussion we tried to highlight the role of the additional visual complexity that characterizes Arabic orthography in reading acquisition. In the second section, we concentrate on the relationship between language experience, such as reading a particular language with particular orthographic and morphologic characteristics, and the genetic functional architecture of language processes in the cerebral hemispheres of the brain. We try to determine if that the processing of Arabic orthography seems to make different demands on the cognitive system both in beginning and in skilled readers. Specifically, we try to assess the contribution of language-specific orthographic and morphological structure to the involvement of the right hemisphere (RH) in the early stages of reading. Using behavioral measures of performance asymmetries in a divided visual field paradigm, we argue that Arabic orthography specifically disallows the involvement of the RH in letter identification, even while the RH of the same participants does contribute to this process in English and in Hebrew. Finally, our focus on the relationship between the morphological structure of a language and performance asymmetries in a lateralized lexical decision task reveal a pattern of similarities and differences in the processing of English (which has a concatenative morphological structure), and Hebrew and Arabic (which have a nonconcatenative structure).
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Literacy Studies, 2014
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Tremor and other hyperkinetic movements (New York, N.Y.), 2012
Essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are probably the most common movement diso... more Essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are probably the most common movement disorders. As ethnic differences have been reported in ET, we designed the present study to evaluate the prevalence of ET and that of Parkinson's disease (PD) in the Druze villages of northern Israel. A two-phase, door-to-door survey was undertaken. Residents aged ≥51 years who agreed to participate and answered "yes" to tremor or PD-related screening questions and 3% of subjects who screened negative were evaluated. Diagnostic criteria for ET were similar to those used in Sicilian and Spanish studies. PD was diagnosed according to Gelb's criteria. The target population consisted of 9,086, the study cohort of 3,980 residents. Tremor was observed in 36 subjects. In 27, the tremor fully met the criteria for ET. The prevalence of ET (age ≥65) was 1.49% (95% CI 0.91-2.07%). PD was diagnosed in 23 subjects. The prevalence of PD (age ≥65) was 1.13 (95% CI 0.62-1.64%). Leucine-ric...
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Writing Systems Research, 2013
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Literacy Studies, 2014
ABSTRACT The present study set out to explore the underpinnings of early reading acquisition in A... more ABSTRACT The present study set out to explore the underpinnings of early reading acquisition in Arabic among native Arabic speakers. Specifically, we compared the contribution of intra-lexical versus supra-lexical factors, assessed in Kindergarten, to individual differences in later word recognition and reading comprehension. Our aim was to determine the extent to which word recognition in Arabic can be characterized as "modular" given the unique complexities of this script (i.e., diglossia, multiple graphemic complexities, morphological density and complex phonotactic rules). At the end of kindergarten, 194 native Arabic speakers living in Israel were administered a battery of tests assessing a variety of intra-lexical factors (phonemic awareness, phonological processing, visual-orthographic processing, pre-school print concepts and morphological awareness) and supra-lexical factors (nonverbal ability, receptive vocabulary, syntactic awareness and working memory). Word recognition and reading comprehension were assessed at the beginning of Grade 2. Results revealed that decoding skill in Arabic at the beginning of Grade 2, is relatively poor compared to English and Hebrew. Word recognition skill was found to depend mainly on sub-lexical and lexical abilities which together explained 33% of the variance in Grade 2. The stronger predictors were phonemic awareness and phonological processing followed by early print concepts, morphology and visual-orthographic processing. Alongside these intra-lexical abilities, supra-lexical abilities also accounted for 11% of the variance in word recognition, consistent with the multiple complexities of the script. Reading comprehension skill was found to rely heavily on decoding skill but also on higher-order linguistic and cognitive abilities. The prominent role of phonemic awareness in Arabic decoding and the low levels of decoding accuracy suggest that Arabic must be regarded as a low-transparency script. The finding that supra-lexical factors were moderate predictors of word recognition supports the "transparency-by-modularity" interaction proposed by Share (2008), and suggests that Arabic appears to be a case of "semi-modularity".
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ABSTRACT This chapter addresses the relationship between learned behaviors and genetic functional... more ABSTRACT This chapter addresses the relationship between learned behaviors and genetic functional architecture in the area of speech perception and production in the context of speaking and listening in second language by beginning and skilled bilinguals (Ibrahim, Eviatar and Leikin, 2008; Leikin, Ibrahim, Eviatar and Sapir, 2009). These studies are based on a case study of a bilingual aphasic patients who showed differential performance patterns in 1st and 2nd language (see, Eviatar, Leikin, and Ibrahim,1999). In the first part, the hypothesis related to foreign languages processing and its relation to measure of ego permeability will be discussed. Specifically, the focus will be on the correlations between the ‘heaviness’ of the accent of foreign language speakers and a measure of empathy as it was examined by Ibrahim and his associates. In the second part, I will try to answer the question "how native and non-native speaking listeners perceive accented and native-accented speech". This cross-sectional study that confirmed and extended previous models in the literature and implications of these findings is discussed.
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Written Language & Literacy, 2014
The present study aims to examine the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis in new scr... more The present study aims to examine the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis in new script acquisitionby comparing the performance of Circassian L1 speaking children who are emerging quadri-literates with Hebrew L1 speaking children who are emerging biliterates. Tests in decoding and spelling various English target conventions were conducted. Thirty 10 year old Circassian L1 speaking children were compared to 46 Hebrew L1 speaking children. Results show that the group of Circassian L1 speaking children outperformed the group of Hebrew L1 speaking children and showed a significant advantage in decoding and spelling target orthographic conventions. There were no significant differences between the two groups on decoding and spelling the silent 〈e〉, which provided a challenge for both groups. The results provide support for the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesiswhereby phonemes and orthographic characteristics that exist in a child’s first or additional language...
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Reading and Writing, 2006
The goal of the present study was to explore the pattern of lexical connections between translati... more The goal of the present study was to explore the pattern of lexical connections between translation equivalents represented in the cognitive system of an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual. To achieve this goal, repetition priming effects (reaction times (RTs) and accuracy measures) were compared between translation equivalents in the two forms of Arabic, Spoken Arabic (SA) and Literary Arabic (LA), with those between
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