Scanning in Different Scripts: Does Jawi interfere with Bahasa Malaysia and English?

Abstract

This article reports on two experiments which investigate the array-scanning characteristics of Malaysian subjects when exposed to arrays of Roman and Arabic letters. It examines the search patterns to see if there is any interference between the Roman alphabet and Arabic scripts used to read Bahasa Malaysia. The experiments show that Malaysian subjects produced unique search patterns with both Roman and Arabic letters. These patterns are then related to search patterns found with native English speakers and native Arabic speakers. The article then discusses how these patterns may be related to the underlying linguistic structure of words in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Arabic.