Transposed letter priming effects and allographic variation in Arabic: Insights from lexical decision and the same-different task.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2019;
45:729-757. [PMID:
31120301 PMCID:
PMC6532566 DOI:
10.1037/xhp0000621]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Reading is resilient to distortion of letter order within a word. This is evidenced in the “transposed-letter (TL) priming effect,” the finding that a prime generated by transposing adjacent letters in a word (e.g., jugde) facilitates recognition of the base word (e.g., JUDGE), more than a “substituted-letter” control prime in which the transposed letters are replaced by unrelated letters (e.g., junpe -JUDGE). The TL priming effect is well documented for European languages that are written using the Roman alphabet. Unlike these languages, Arabic has a unique position-dependent allography whereby some letters change shape according to their position within a word. We investigate the TL priming effect using a lexical decision (Experiment 1) and a same–different match task with Arabic words (Experiment 2) and nonwords (Experiment 3). No TL priming effects were found in Experiment 1, suggesting that the lexical-decision task engages lexical access processes that are sensitive to the Semitic nonlinear morphological structure. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed a robust TL priming effect overall. Nonallographic TL primes produced significantly larger facilitation than allographic TL primes, indicating that Arabic readers use allographic variation to resolve the uncertainty in letter order during the early stages of orthographic processing. The implication of these results for current letter position coding models is discussed.
Transposed-letter (TL) priming effects are popularly interpreted as reflecting noisy perception of letter order. The Arabic writing system has a unique allographic feature whereby a letter’s shape and letter spacing depend on its position within a word. We show that TL priming effects for Arabic words and nonwords are modulated by allography in the same–different task. It is important to consider which unique property of the language/writing system produces the cross-language variation, and how it does so.
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