Abstract
This study was an investigation of several Arabic reading measures among dyslexics and normal Arabic readers across different ages (grades 3, 6, 9, and 12): the role of morphology, short vowelization (phonological and syntactic skills), spelling, reading isolated words, and reading comprehension. The results of the one-way ANOVAs indicated clear differences between the dyslexic readers and the normal readers on all reading measures. However, the stepwise regression analysis revealed consistent “orthographic” results: morphology (identification and/or production) and spelling were generally the most powerful predictors of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension among dyslexic and normal readers across these different age groups. The results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of the Arabic orthography and the heavy reliance of readers at all levels and ages on “orthographic” factors in reading.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abd El-Minem, F. M. (1987). Elm al-sarf. Jerusalem: Al-Taufik Press (in Arabic).
Abu-Rabia S., (1996). The role of vowels and context in reading of highly skilled native Arabic readers. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25:629–641
Abu-Rabia, S. (1997a). Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9: 65–78
Abu-Rabia S., (1997b). Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers in reading paragraphs, sentences and isolated words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26:465–482
Abu-Rabia S., (1998). Reading Arabic texts: Effects of text type, reader type, and vowelization. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10: 106–119
Abu-Rabia S., (2001). The role of vowels in reading Semitic scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14:39–59
Abu-Rabia S., (2002). Reading in a root-based morphology language. Journal of Research in Reading, 25:299–309
Abu-Rabia S., Awwad J., (2004) Morphological structures in visual word recognition: The case of Arabic. Journal of Research in Reading, 27:321–336
Abu-Rabia S., Taha H., (2004). Reading and spelling error analysis of native dyslexic readers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17:651- 689
Abu-Rabia S., Taha H., (2005). Reading in Arabic orthography. In: Joshi R.M., Aaron P.G. (eds). Handbook of orthography and literacy. Amsterdam, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Abu-Rabia S., Taha H., (2006). Phonological errors predominate in Arabic spelling across grades 1 to 9. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 35: 167–188
Abu-Rabia S., Share D., Mansour M., (2003). Word recognition and basic cognitive processes among reading-disabled and normal readers in Arabic. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16:423–442
Arnbak E., Elbro C., (2002). The effects of morphological awareness training on the reading and spelling skills of young dyslexics. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 44:229–251
Beauvillain C., Segui J., (1992). Representation and processing of morphological information. In: Frost R., Katz L. (eds). Orthography, phonology and meaning. Amsterdam, Elsevier Science Publishers. pp. 1–2
Belánd R., Mimouni Z., (2001). Arabic-French bilingual aphasic patients. Cognition 82: 77–126
Ben-Dror I., Bentin S., Frost R., (1995). Semantic, phonological and morphological skills in reading disabled and normal children. Reading Research Quarterly, 30:876–893
Bentin S., Frost R., (1995). Morphological factors in visual word recognition in Hebrew. In: Feldman L. (eds). Morphological aspects of language processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 217–292
Bradley L., Bryant P., (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read: A causal connection. Nature, 301:419–421
Bruck M., (1988). The word recognition and spelling of dyslexic children. Reading Research Quarterly, 83:51–68
Bruck M., (1990). Word-recognition skills of adults with childhood diagnosis of dyslexia. Developmental Psychology, 26:439–454
Carlisle J.F., (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In: Feldman L.B. (eds.). Morphological aspects of language processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Champion A., (1997). Knowledge of suffixed words: A comparison of reading disabled and nondisabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 47:29–55
Clark E.V., Hecht B.F., (1982). Learning to coin agent and instrument nouns. Cognition, 12:1–24
Durgunoğlu A.Y., Nagy W.E., Hancin-Bhatt B.J., (1993). Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85:453–465
Ehri L.C., Wilce L.S., (1983). Development of word identification speed in skilled and less skilled beginning readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75:3–18
Erlbo C., Arnbak E., (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 46:209–240
Feldman L.B., (1991). The contribution of morphology to word repetition. Psychological Research, 53:33–41
Feldman L.B., (1994). Beyond orthography and phonology: Differences between inflections and derivations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33:442–470
Fowler A.E., Liberman I.Y., (1995). The role of phonology and orthography in morphological awareness. In: Feldman L.B. (eds). Morphological aspects of language processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Frost R., Forster K., Deutsch A., (1997). What we can learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23:829–856
Ibrahim R., Eviatar Z., Aharon-Peretz A., (2002). The characteristics of Arabic orthography slow its processing. Neuropsychology, 16: 322–326
Jared D., Seidenberg M.S., (1991). Does word identification proceed from spelling to sound to meaning?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120:358–394
Liberman I.Y., Liberman A.M., (1990). Whole word versus code emphasis: Underlying assumptions and their implication for reading instruction. Bulletin of the Orthon Society, 40:51–76
Lukatela G., Turvey M.T., (1994). Visual lexical access is initially phonological: I. Evidence from associative priming by words, homophones, and pseudohomophones. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123:107–128
Lundberg I., Olofsson A., Wall S., (1980). Reading and spelling skills in the first school years predicted from phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 21:159–173
MacBride-Chang C., (1995). What is phonological awareness?. Journal of Educational Psychology, 8:179–192
Manis F., Seidenberg M., Doi L., McBride-Chang C., Peterson A., (1996). On the basis of two subtypes of developmental dyslexia. Cognition, 58:157–195
Mann V.A., Liberman I.Y., (1984). Phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory: Can they presage early reading problems?. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 17:592–599
Olson R., Wise B., Conners F., Rack J., Fulker D., (1989). Specific deficits in component reading and language skills: Genetic and environmental influences. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22:339–348
Perfetti C.A., Bell L., (1991). Phonemic activation during the first 40 ms of word identification: Evidence from backward masking and priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 30:473–485
Perfetti C.A., Bell L., Delaney S., (1988). Automatic phonetic activation in silent word reading: Evidence from backward masking. Journal of Memory and Language, 27:59–70
Purnet J.F., Béland R., Idrissi A., (2000). The mental representation of Semitic words. Linguistic Inquiry, 31:609–648
Raven, J., Raven, J.C., Court, J.H., (1993). Manual for Raven’s progressive matrices and vocabulary scales revised. Oxford, Oxford Psychologists Press.
Ravid D., (2001). Learning to spell in Hebrew: Phonological and morphological factors. Reading and writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14:459–485
Shankweiler, D., & Liberman, K. (Eds.), (1989). Phonology and reading disability: Solving the reading puzzle. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Siedenberg M.S., (1985). The time course of information activation and utilization in visual word recognition. In: Besner D., Waller T.G., MacKinnon E.M. (eds). Reading research: Advances in theory and practice. Academic Press, New York, pp. 199–252
Siegel L.S., (1986). Phonological deficiencies in children with a reading disability. Canadian Journal of Special Education, 2: 45–54
Siegel L.S., (1989). I.Q is irrelevant to the definition of learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22:496–478
Siegel L.S., Ryan E.B., (1988). Development of grammatical sensitivity, phonological, and short-term memory in normally achieving and learning disabled children. Developmental Psychology, 24:28–37
Snowling M., (1980). The development of grapheme-phoneme correspondence in normal and dyslexic readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 29:294–305
Stanovich K.E., (1988a). Explaining the differences between the dyslexic and garden variety poor reader. The phonological-core variance-differences model. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21:590–604, 612
Stanovich K.E., (1988b). The right and wrong places to look for the cognitive locus of reading disability. Annals of Dyslexia, 38:154–177
Stanovich K.E., (1991). Discrepancy definitions of reading disability: Has intelligence led us astray?. Reading Research Quarterly, 26:7–29
Stanovich K.E., Siegel L.S., (1994). Phenotypic performance profile of children with reading disabilities: A regression-based test of the phonological-core variable-difference model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86:24–53
Stanovich K.E., Cunningham A.E., Cramer B.B., (1984). Assessing phonological awareness in kindergarten children: Issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38:175–190
Stanovich K.E., Siegel L.S., Gottardo A., (1997). Converging evidence for phonological and surface subtypes of reading disability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89: 114–127
Treiman R., (1992). The role of intrasyllabic units in learning to read and spell. In: Gough P., Ehri L., Treiman R. (eds). Reading acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
Tunmer W.E., Nesdale A.R., (1985). Phonetic segmentation skill and beginning reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77:417–427
Van Orden G.C., Pennington B.F., Stone G.O., (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics. Psychological Review, 97:488–522
Waters G.S., Bruck M., Seidenberg M., (1985). Do children use similar processes to read and spell words?. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39:511–530
Yopp H.K., (1988). The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests. Reading Research Quarterly, 23:159–177
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abu-Rabia, S. The Role of Morphology and Short Vowelization in Reading Arabic among Normal and Dyslexic Readers in Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12. J Psycholinguist Res 36, 89–106 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-006-9035-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-006-9035-6