Eye movements in Arabic reading

Abstract

Measures of eye movements provide a moment-by-moment account of the visual and cognitive processes that underlie normal reading. These measures have been used to develop detailed sophisticated computational models of eye movement control during reading, primarily based on research conducted with European languages such as English and German, which use the Roman orthography. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying eye movement control during reading for Semitic languages, such as Arabic, which have very different visual and linguistic characteristics. In this chapter, we provide an overview of eye movement research on reading, including research conducted to date on eye movements in Arabic reading. We consider whether current computational models can account for these findings and outline key theoretical questions that remain to be examined empirically.

Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading

“…We argued in the Introduction that this low rate of wordskipping might be a consequence of specific orthographic and morphological characteristics of the Arabic script (see also AlJassmi et al, 2021). In particular, we noted that the use of a semi-cursive script with variable letter widths might limit the usefulness of parafoveal length information for constraining word identities.…”

“…Beyond these findings, it should be clear that we currently lack a model of eye-movement control that can account for more specific influences of Arabic orthography and morphology (see Hermena & Reichle, 2020, for further discussion). This necessarily will include mechanisms that can account for effects of the locations of core (i.e., root) information and number of morphological units on the processing of words (AlJassmi et al, 2021;Tibi et al, 2020;Tibi & Kirby, 2017). Consequently, while existing models might account for the lexical effects reported in the present experiments, more sophisticated mechanisms will be required to account for the influence of Arabic orthography and morphology on eye-movement control in reading.…”

“…These influences on eye guidance have been extensively investigated in writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, such as English and German. However, comparatively little research has investigated effects in Semitic scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew, despite these having very different visual and linguistic characteristics (see, e.g., AlJassmi et al, 2021). Such knowledge is nevertheless crucial for establishing the generality of mechanisms of eye guidance across different alphabetic writing systems.…”

Visual similarity effects in the identification of Arabic letters: evidence with masked priming

“…Here, we focus on the Arabic script. This script, which is used in multiple languages with diverse linguistic roots (e.g., Arabic [Semitic], Persian [Indo-European], Uyghur [Turkic], Urdu [Indo-Aryan], Balti [Sino-Tibetan], Somali [Afro-Asiatic] Mandinka [Mande]), presents unique features in comparison to the Latin script (see AlJassmi et al, 2021;Hermena & Reichle, 2020, for recent reviews).…”