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

Abstract

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. 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’ 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.

Visual attention span as a predictor of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Arabic

“…In non-vowelized Arabic script, this might contribute to accurate and fast identification of root letters among word patterns. Further, higher visual attention resources might favor letter information processing across multiple words in parallel in sentence reading ( Snell and Grainger, 2019 ), which might trigger fast word recognition ( Hermena et al, 2021 ; Khateb et al, 2022 ).…”

Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading

“…This raises the question of whether similar information is obtained in Arabic reading. While evidence exists to suggest this might be the case (e.g., Hermena et al, 2019;Hermena et al, 2021), this issue requires further investigation, including needing to establish whether parafoveal processing of morphological information is influenced by contextual constraints. Moreover, this approach might also be used to investigate whether the location of root information can influence processing, such that parafoveal preview effects might be stronger when this information is closer to the beginning of words.…”