Faris HaroonRasheed Obeed

Introduction Visual 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. Methods Native 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. Results Results 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. Discussion The 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 …

In delineating the amount of orthographic information that can be processed in parallel during a single fixation, the visual attention (VA) span acts as a key component of the reading system. Previous studies focused on the contribution of VA span to normal and pathological reading in monolingual and bilingual children from different European languages, without direct cross-language comparison. In the current paper, we explored modulations of VA span abilities in three languages –French, Spanish, and Arabic– that differ in transparency, reading direction and writing systems. The participants were skilled adult readers who were native speakers of French, Spanish or Arabic. They were administered tasks of global and partial letter report, single letter identification and text reading. Their VA span abilities were assessed using tasks that require the processing of briefly presented five consonant strings (e.g., R S H F T). All five consonants had to be reported in global report but a single cued letter in partial report. Results showed that VA span was reduced in Arabic readers as compared to French or Spanish readers who otherwise show a similar high performance in the two report tasks. The analysis of VA span response patterns in global report showed a left-right asymmetry in all three languages. A leftward letter advantage was found in French and Spanish but a rightward advantage in Arabic. The response patterns were symmetric in partial report, regardless of the language. Last, a significant relationship was found between VA span abilities and reading speed but only for French. The overall findings suggest that the size of VA span, the shape of …

RésuméL’objectif général de cette thèse était d’étudier les capacités d’empan visuo-attentionnel (VA) des lecteurs arabophones. Les recherches ont montré que l’empan VA module le traitement visuel des séquences de lettres et joue à ce titre un rôle important en lecture experte, tel que modélisé dans le cadre du modèle multitraces de lecture experte (Ans, Carbonnel et Valdois, 1998). Il a également été montré que l'empan VA joue un rôle dans l’acquisition de la lecture et qu’une réduction de l’empan VA explique certaines formes de dyslexies développementales. Néanmoins, les études menées jusqu’ici se sont limitées aux langues européennes. Il s’agissait donc d’évaluer la pertinence du concept d’empan VA dans une langue de structure très différente, comme l’arabe. Deux questions principales ont été abordées : la première (Etude 1) portait sur une éventuelle modulation des capacités d’empan VA selon la langue ; elle a été menée chez des lecteurs experts. La seconde (Etude 2) visait à évaluer l’implication de l’empan VA dans les troubles de l’apprentissage de la lecture. Dans l’étude 1, nous avons comparé les performances d’empan VA chez des adultes de langue française, espagnole et arabe. Nous montrons notamment que les capacités d’empan VA sont plus limitées chez les arabophones que chez les français ou les hispanophones. La taille de l’empan VA n’est pas modulée par la transparence de la langue mais pourrait varier selon les contraintes de traitement des mots (traitement parallèle pour le français et l’espagnol mais traitement privilégié de la racine morphologique pour l’arabe). L’étude 2 a porté sur des enfants …