The characteristics of Arabic orthography slow its processing.

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate whether the complexity of Arabic orthography increases its perceptual load, thus slowing word identification. Adolescent Arabic speakers who mastered Hebrew as a second language completed oral and visual versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; J. E. Parington & R. G. Lieter, 1949) in both languages. Oral TMT required declaiming consecutive numbers or alternation between numbers and letters. Visual TMT required connecting Arabic or Indian numbers and alternation between letters and numbers. Performance in Hebrew and Arabic oral TMT did not differ. Performance was significantly slower in Arabic visual TMT. These results indicate that Arabic speakers process Arabic orthography (1st language) slower than Hebrew orthography (2nd language) and suggest that this is due to the complexity of Arabic orthography.

Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates

“…This pattern is attributable to the greater graphemic complexity of Urdu orthography, and is reminiscent of a similar finding reported for Arabic Ibrahim et al, 2002), whose orthography forms the basis for Urdu script.…”

“…For example, the graphemes ( all represent the Arabic letter ain (IPA symbol /ʕ/). In a striking set of studies, Eviatar and colleagues found that native Arabic readers were slower to respond to CVC strings in Arabic as compared to Hebrew and English, their second and third languages respectively Eviatar, Ibrahim, & Ganayim 2004;Ibrahim, Eviatar, & Aharon-Peretz 2002). Indeed, the Arabic readers tested by Eviatar et al exhibited greater accuracy in identifying Hebrew compared to Arabic letters.…”

Introduction to the special issue on literacy in Arabic

“…Indeed, a number of studies have investigated the graphic characters of the Arabic script and concluded that they constitute a specific challenge to Arabic readers, particularly in terms of the ability of the reader to distinguish individual letters. For example, work by Ibrahim, Eviatar and Aharon-Peretz (2002) found that Arabic-Israeli participants were slower in processing Arabic letters than Hebrew letters, despite the fact that Arabic was the first language of the individuals tested. These researchers have concluded that such effects are due to the complexity of Arabic script compared to the Hebrew script.…”

Spelling Development among Triangle versus Native Bedouin Arabic Pupils

“…It was suggested that the complexity of Arabic orthography imposes a linguistic burden that is created by additional orthographic information in Arabic, as compared with other orthographies, such as the Hebrew orthography (Azzam, 1993;Eviatar, Ibrahim, & Ganayim, 2004;Ibrahim, Eviatar & Aharon-Perez 2002), and English orthography (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2004). According to these studies, this linguistic burden of the Arabic orthography plays a significant role in the acquisition of the written form of Arabic, compared with other languages, and may cause a delay in the literary development and in the ability to achieve automatic reading (Ibrahim et al, 2002;Eviatar, Ibrahim, & Ganayim, 2004;Ibrahim and Aharon-Peretz, 2005). Trying to better understand the linguistic features that affect the reading process in the written form of Arabic, a recent study by Taha, Ibrahim, and Khateb (2013) among adult native Arabic skilled readers found that reaction times variance was higher and accuracy was lower in non-connected words compared with connected words.…”

“…Several studies in the past few years have pointed out difficulties with the acquisition of the written form of Arabic among native Arabic speakers (Abu Rabia, 2001, 2002Abu Rabia & Siegel, 1995;Abu Rabia & Taha, 2004Azzam, 1984Azzam, , 1993Bentin & Ibrahim, 1996;Eviatar, Ibrahim & Ganayim, 2004;Ibrahim, Eviatar & Aharon-Perez, 2002;Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004Saiegh-Haddad, Levin, Hende, and Ziv, 2011). For example, it was found that reaction times for visual recognition of Arabic words by senior high school native Arabic skilled readers were longer than reaction times for Hebrew words by native Hebrew high school seniors (Bentin & Ibrahim, 1996), English words by native English undergraduates, and Serbo-Croatian words by native Serbo-Croatians undergraduates (Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987).…”