The study explores the effects of relationship between exposure to two languages in childhood and metalinguistic abilities. Arabic-speaking children who had been exposed both spoken literary Arabic were compared Russian–Hebrew bilinguals Hebrew monolinguals. All kindergarten or first grade. tests included language arbitrariness, phonological awareness, vocabulary. As monolinguals, revealed following pattern: higher performance on arbitrariness awareness tasks lower vocabulary measure....

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

Previous research has suggested that reading Arabic is slower than Hebrew or English, even among native readers. We tested the hypothesis at least part of difficulty in due to visual complexity orthography. Third- and sixth-grade readers who were studying school asked detect a vowel diacritic context words nonwords, nonwords (including connected unconnected letters), nonletter stimuli resembled letters. Participants better detecting target vowels any conditions. Moreover, detection was for...

Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages with a similar morphological structure orthographies that differ in visual complexity. Two experiments explored the interaction of characteristics orthography hemispheric abilities on lateralized versions letter-matching task (Experiment 1) global-local 2). In Experiment 1, native readers fluent matched letters 2 orthographies. The results support hypothesis is more difficult than for participants who can read both this difficulty has its strongest...

The purpose of the study was to examine influence orthographic complexity and diglossia on letter naming automaticity in Arabic. Two experiments were carried out by 31 first graders, 30 third 34 fifth graders 20 university students. In experiment we took advantage Arabic variation shape, compared Stroop effect for correctly written orthographically distorted words. All participants revealed a with both types words, but only showed same degree interference We interpret these results reflect...

This study explores the effects of language status on hemispheric involvement in lexical decision. The authors looked at responses native Arabic speakers (L1 for reading) and two second languages (L2): Hebrew, which is similar to L1 morphological structure, English, very different from L1. Two groups performed lateralized decision tasks three languages, using unilateral presentations bilateral presentations. These paradigms allowed us infer both specialization interhemispheric communication...

Both reading words and text in Arabic is slower than other languages, even among skilled native speakers Previously we have shown that the right hemisphere (RH) had difficulty matching letters, suggested it cannot contribute to word recognition Arabic. In this study tested finding directly. We used Divided Visual Field (DVF) lexical decision (LD) paradigm assess hemispheric function during reading. The experiment two conditions (unilateral bilateral). unilateral condition, target stimulus...

Abstract Language-specific effects are observed in the performance of numerical tasks. We evaluated effect number word system (non-inverted; decade-unit format HDU vs inverted; unit-decade HUD) multi-digit numbers on transcoding among Arabic-Hebrew bilingual university students. Both languages written right-to-left, but only Arabic sequence words is inverted, with units stipulated before decades (e.g. ‘four-and-twenty’). Previously we (Hayek et al., Writing Systems Research 11:188–202, 2019)...