Revealing the Superior Perceptibility of Words in Arabic

Abstract

When alphabetic stimuli are presented very briefly, people perceive real words better than nonwords. It is generally accepted that this word superiority effect reflects the efficiency of visual word perception. However, much of what is known about this effect comes from research conducted in languages using the Latin alphabet (eg English, French, Italian), and little is known about whether alphabetic languages with visual properties fundamentally different from Latinate languages also produce word superiority effects. We report an experiment in which stimuli (words, illegal nonwords, and pseudowords) were presented in Arabic, which is a cursive script, read from right to left. The findings revealed advantages for words over pseudowords and illegal nonwords, and for pseudowords over illegal nonwords, indicating that the superiority effects reported for Latinate languages are also observed in Arabic. Implications of these findings for understanding the processes involved in word recognition are discussed.