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

Abstract

IntroductionVisual attention span is a measure of multielement parallel processing. Individuals with higher visual attention span are expected to allocate more attention to letters within strings, which boosts letter identification and translates into more efficient reading. Given the high visual complexity of the Arabic writing system, we expected visual attention span to be an important predictor of reading in the Arabic language.MethodsNative Arabic readers from Grade 4 and Grade 5 were recruited in Iraqi schools. We assessed the contribution of visual attention span to their reading fluency performance in tasks of fully vowelized word and pseudo-word reading, non-vowelized text reading, and written text comprehension. Their phonological awareness, IQ, and single letter processing speed were further evaluated.ResultsResults showed that visual attention span was a significant unique predictor of all the reading measures. Visual attention span and phonological awareness accounted for a similar amount of variance in word and pseudo-word reading fluency. Visual attention span was a far higher predictor than phonological awareness for text reading fluency and the sole predictor of text comprehension.DiscussionThe role of visual attention span to reading is discussed by reference to current word recognition models. Higher involvement of visual attention is expected in vowelized script to compensate for increased crowding in the presence of diacritics. Visual attention would thus contribute to sub-lexical orthographic parsing and favor orthography-to-phonology mapping, in particular for the pseudo-words that do not benefit from efficient lexical feedback. In non-vowelized script, higher visual attention would enhance the accurate and fast identification of root letters within words, thus resulting in faster word recognition.

Study of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Influences in the Reading Task in Arabic

“…Interestingly, our analyses revealed strong correlations between reading speed and free recall rate (FR). In the first instance, this result can be interpreted by the proposals of proponents of the visual attention span [32,34]. For example, the results of Awadah et al [32] emphasized a significant relationship between free recall rate (FR) and reading speed.On the other hand, given the display of words in the rapid visual serial presentation task, the significant relationship between reading speed and free recall rate (FR) is likely a direct contribution from visual short-term memory [48,49].…”

“…Awadah and colleagues [32] show that the size of the visual attention span (VAS) in good readers was greater than that in poor readers. It is worth mentioning that the relationship between visual attention span size and reading speed was only significant in young readers [32,34].In expert reading [35], the results indicate a narrowing of the visual attention window size and slower reading in Arabic readers compared to French and Spanish readers. No significant relationship was revealed between the observed narrowing of the visual attention window size and slower reading in Arabic.…”