The influence of perceptual load on the orthographic complexity of Arabic words processing: ERP Evidence

Abstract

The current study manipulated according to perceptual load theory (PLT) by increasing the letters' numbers of Arabic words and pseudowords to examine the effect of selective attention on the orthographic complexity of Arabic words. The current study's objective is to investigate the effect of selective attention on Event-Related Potentials components associated with orthographic codes such as N170. Participants were requested to perform lexical decision task by identifying words vs. pseudowords. Results showed that there is a significant effect of selective attention on N170 component, which reflects orthographic coding of words with increase negatively for three-letters words compared to six-letters words or nine-letters words. Interestingly, Selective attention does not affect the pseudowords, in that there are no differences between different pseudowords according to length. These findings suggested that selective attention influenced both words and pseudo-words. These findings showed that orthographic coding stages strongly depend on selective attention.

Efectos simultáneos de la atención y los colores en la velocidad de procesamiento en los hemisferios cerebrales de las palabras árabes

“…Another possible interpretation for this color effect of word processing could be due to competitive responses of reading the colored words, which interferes with color naming led to increase the RT for colored words and suggesting that word recognition is faster when the words interfere with colors (e.g., Jensen & Rohwer, 1966). Interestingly, experiment 1 reported faster RTs to eight-letter white colored words than other word categories (i.e., six-letter, four-letter and two-letter white colored words), suggesting an opposite pattern that has been reported in previous studies, that used a similar attentional manipulation (i.e., Mohamed, 2018a), in that RTs were increased with the increment of word length. One possible interpretation, that colors modulate cerebral processing speed for white colored words, and the competition between word length and colors reverse the effect of selective attention.…”

“…Earlier studies consider that words are a specific category which is processed differently from other visual modalities and activate specific regions in the left cerebral hemisphere (Amenta et al, 2021;Cohen & Dehaene, 2004;Noble, Truest & McCarthy, 1994). Additionally, recent studies have suggested that selective attention may modulate word processing speed in both cerebral hemispheres, when attention was manipulated by increasing the word length (Mohamed, 2018a,b;Ellis;Young & Anderson, 1988), in that longer reaction times were observed when words letters were increased (Mohamed, 2018a), suggesting that selective attention influences the word lexical decision in the left hemisphere. These findings suggested that words are processed by two different mechanisms; first which is seen at left hemisphere, and operates independently of word length, while the second is observed in the right hemisphere, that depends on word length.…”

How visual attention span and phonological skills contribute to N170 print tuning: An EEG study in French dyslexic students

“…In the literature of ERP studies dedicated to the link between left-N170 component properties and visual word recognition, researchers found that this marker could be sensitive to a large range of language-specific processing (orthographic: Rossion et al, 2003;phonological: Sacchi & Laszlo, 2016 and semantic: Segalowitz & Zheng, 2009) and to other factors such as attentional load (Mohamed, 2018) or visual familiarity (Xue et al, 2019). Hence, the kind of the task used during the EEG-recording could have different effect on the print-specific N170 modulation (for instance, see Faísca et al, 2019 for a comparison of N170 sensitivity between explicit and implicit reading tasks).…”