Part of
Experimental Arabic LinguisticsEdited by Dimitrios Ntelitheos and Tommi Tsz-Cheung Leung
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 10] 2021
► pp. 85–108
Edited by Dimitrios Ntelitheos and Tommi Tsz-Cheung Leung
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 10] 2021
► pp. 85–108
Eye movements in Arabic reading
A Review of the current literature
Measures of eye movements provide a moment-by-moment account of the visual and cognitive processes that underlie normal reading. These measures have been used to develop detailed sophisticated computational models of eye movement control during reading, primarily based on research conducted with European languages such as English and German, which use the Roman orthography. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying eye movement control during reading for Semitic languages, such as Arabic, which have very different visual and linguistic characteristics. In this chapter, we provide an overview of eye movement research on reading, including research conducted to date on eye movements in Arabic reading. We consider whether current computational models can account for these findings and outline key theoretical questions that remain to be examined empirically.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Mechanisms of eye movement control in reading
- 3.The Perceptual span for reading
- 4.Word factors affecting the spatial and temporal characteristics of eye movements
- 5.Parafoveal processing in reading
- 6.Models of eye movement control in reading
- 7.The Arabic writing system
- 8.Eye movement research on Arabic reading
- 9.Final comments and future directions
-
References
References
Abu-Rabia, S.
(1997) Reading
in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on
reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic
readers. Reading and
Writing, 9, 65–78. 
(2002) Reading
in a root-based-morphology language: the case of
Arabic. Journal of Research
in
Reading, 25, 299–309.
Abu-Rabia, S., & Taha, H.
(2006) Reading
in Arabic orthography: Characteristics, research findings,
and
assessment. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook
of orthography and
literacy (pp. 321–338). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Alotaibi, A. Z.
(2007) The
effect of font size and type on reading performance with
Arabic words in normally sighted and simulated cataract
subjects. Clinical and
Experimental
Optometry, 90, 203–206.
Balota, D., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K.
(1985) The
interaction of contextual constraints and parafoveal visual
information in
reading. Cognitive
Psychology, 17, 364–390.
Blanchard, H. E., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K.
(1989) The
acquisition of parafoveal word information in
reading. Perception &
Psychophysics, 46, 85–94.
Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., Staub, A., & Schlesewsky, M.
(2016) The
time course of sentence processing in the
brain. In G. Hickok & S. L. Small (Eds.), The
neurobiology of
language (pp. 607–620). North Holland: Academic Press.
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W.
(2001) Morphological
units in the Arabic mental
lexicon. Cognition, 81, 65–92.
(2004) Allomorphic
variation in Arabic: Implications for lexical processing and
representation. Brain and
Language, 90, 106–116.
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D.
(2010) Aralex:
a lexical database for Modern Standard
Arabic. Behavior Research
Methods, 42, 481–487.
Boudelaa, S., Norris, D., Mahfoudhi, A., & Kinoshita, S.
(2019) Transposed
letter priming effects and allographic variation in Arabic:
Insights from lexical decision and the same–different
task. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 45, 729–757.
Bowers, N. R., & Poletti, M.
(2017) Microsaccades
during reading. PLoS
ONE, 12, e0185180.
Briihl, D., & Inhoff, A. W.
(1995) Integrating
information across fixations during reading: The use of
orthographic bodies and of exterior
letters. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 21, 55–67.
Brothers, T., Swaab, T. Y., & Traxler, M. J.
(2015) Effects
of prediction and contextual support on lexical processing:
prediction takes
precedence. Cognition, 136, 135–149.
(2017) Goals
and strategies influence lexical prediction during sentence
comprehension. Journal of
Memory and
Language, 93, 203–216.
Brysbaert, M.
(2019) How
many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis
of reading rate. Journal of
Memory and
Language 109, 1–30.
Brysbaert, M., & Vitu, F.
(1998) Word
skipping: implications for theories of eye movement control
in
reading. In G. Underwood (Ed.), Eye
guidance in reading and scene perception
I (pp. 125–147), Elsevier Science Ltd; North Holland.
Carreiras, M., Perea, M., & Abu Mallouh, R.
(2012) Priming
of abstract letter representations may be universal: The
case of Arabic. Psychonomic
Bulletin &
Review, 19, 685–690.
Daniels, P. T.
(2013) The
Arabic writing
system. In J. Owens (Ed.), The
Oxford handbook of Arabic
linguistics (pp. 422–431). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Pelleg, S., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K.
(2003) Early
morphological effects in reading: Evidence from parafoveal
preview benefit in
Hebrew. Psychonomic Bulletin
&
Review, 10, 415–422.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K.
(2000) Early
morphological effects in word recognition in Hebrew:
Evidence from parafoveal preview
benefit. Language and
Cognitive
Processes, 15, 487–506.
(2005) Morphological
parafoveal preview benefit effects in reading: Evidence from
Hebrew. Language and
Cognitive
Processes, 20, 341–371.
Deutsch, A., & Rayner, K.
(1999) Initial
fixation location effects in reading Hebrew
words. Language and Cognitive
Processes, 14, 393–421.
Dimigen, O., Sommer, W., Hohlfeld, A., Jacobs, A. M., & Kliegl, R.
(2011) Coregistration
of eye movements and EEG in natural reading: analyses and
review. Journal of
Experimental Psychology:
General, 140, 552–572.
Drieghe, D., Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A.
(2005) Eye
movements and word skipping during reading
revisited. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 31, 954–969.
Ehrlich, S., & Rayner, K.
(1981) Contextual
effects on word perception and eye movements during
reading. Journal of Verbal
Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 20, 641–655.
Engbert, R., & Kliegl, R.
(2012) Parallel
graded attention models of
reading. In S. P. Liversedge, I. D. Gilchrist, & S. Everling (Eds.), The
Oxford handbook of eye
movements (pp. 787–800). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Engbert, R., Longtin, A., & Kliegl, R.
(2002) A
dynamical model of saccade generation in reading based on
spatially distributed lexical
processing. Vision
Research, 42, 621–636.
Engbert, R., Nuthmann, A., Richter, E. M., & Kliegl, R.
(2005) SWIFT:
A dynamical model of saccade generation during
reading. Psychological
Review, 112, 777–813.
Farid, M., & Grainger, J.
(1996) How
initial fixation position influences visual word
recognition: A comparison of French and
Arabic. Brain and
Language, 53, 351–368.
Hermena, E. W., Liversedge, S. P., Bouamama, S., & Drieghe, D.
(2019) Orthographic
and root frequency effects in Arabic: Evidence from eye
movements and lexical
decision. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 45, 934–954.
Hermena, E., Drieghe, D., Hellmuth, S., & Liversedge, S.
(2015) Processing
of Arabic diacritical marks: Phonological–syntactic
disambiguation of homographic verbs and visual crowding
effects. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 41, 494–507.
Hermena, E., Liversedge, S., & Drieghe, D.
(2016) Parafoveal
processing of Arabic diacritical
marks. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 42, 2021–2038.
(2017) The
influence of a word’s number of letters, spatial extent, and
initial bigram characteristics on eye movement control
during reading: Evidence from
Arabic. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 43, 451–471.
Hilz, R., & Cavonius, C. R.
(1974) Functional
organization of the peripheral retina: Sensitivity to
periodic stimuli. Vision
Research, 14, 1333–1337.
Hohenstein, S., Laubrock, J., & Kliegl, R.
(2010) Semantic
preview benefit in eye movements during reading: A
parafoveal fast-priming
study. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 36, 1150–1170.
Hyönä, J.
(2011) Foveal
and parafoveal processing during
reading. In S. P. Liversedge, I. D. Gilchrist, & S. Everling (Eds.), The
Oxford handbook of eye
movements (pp. 819–838). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.
Hyönä, J., & Bertram, R.
(2011) Optimal
viewing position effects in reading
Finnish. Vision
Research, 51, 1279–1287.
Inhoff, A. W.
(1987) Parafoveal
word perception during eye fixations in reading: Effects of
visual salience and word
structure. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention
and
performance (Vol. 12, pp. 403–420). London: Erlbaum.
(1989a) Lexical
access during eye fixations in reading: Are word access
codes used to integrate lexical information across interword
fixations? Journal of Memory
and
Language, 28, 444–461.
(1989b) Parafoveal
processing of words and saccade computation during eye
fixations in reading. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 15, 544–555.
(1990) Integrating
information across eye fixations in reading: The role of
letter and word units. Acta
Psychologica, 73, 281–297.
Inhoff, A. W., & Tousman, S.
(1990) Lexical
integration across saccades in
reading. Psychological
Research, 52, 330–337.
Inhoff, A. W., & Rayner, K.
(1986) Parafoveal
word processing during eye fixations in reading: Effects of
word frequency. Perception
&
Psychophysics, 40, 431–439.
Jordan, T. R., Almabruk, A. A., McGowan, V. A., & Paterson, K. B.
(2011) Evaluating
hemispheric divisions in processing fixated words: The
evidence from
Arabic. Cortex, 47, 992–997.
Jordan, T. R., Paterson, K. B., Kurtev, S., & Xu, M.
(2010) Re-evaluating
split-fovea processing in word recognition: Effects of
fixation location within
words. Cortex, 46, 298–309.
Jordan, T., Almabruk, A., Gadalla, E., McGowan, V., White, S., Abedipour, L., & Paterson, K.
(2014) Reading
direction and the central perceptual span: Evidence from
Arabic and
English. Psychonomic Bulletin
&
Review, 21, 505–511.
Joseph, H. S., Liversedge, S. P., Blythe, H. I., White, S. J., & Rayner, K.
(2009) Word
length and landing position effects during reading in
children and adults. Vision
Research, 49, 2078–2086.
Juhasz, B. J., White, S. J., Liversedge, S. P., & Rayner, K.
(2008) Eye
movements and the use of parafoveal word length information
in reading. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 34, 1560–1579.
Juhasz, B. J., & Rayner, K.
(2003) Investigating
the effects of a set of intercorrelated variables on eye
fixation durations in
reading. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 29, 1312–1318.
Kambe, G.
(2004) Parafoveal
processing of prefixed words during eye fixations in
reading: Evidence against morphological influences on
parafoveal
pre-processing. Perception
&
Psychophysics, 66, 279–292.
Kliegl, R., Grabner, E., Rolfs, M., & Engbert, R.
(2004) Length,
frequency, and predictability effects of words on eye
movements in
reading. European Journal of
Cognitive
Psychology, 16, 262–284.
Lallier, M., Abu Mallouh, R., Mohammed, A., Khalifa, B., Perea, M., & Carreiras, M.
(2018) Does
the visual attention span play a role in reading in
Arabic? Scientific Studies of
Reading, 22, 181–190.
Legge, G. E., Klitz, T. S., & Tjan, B. S.
(1997) Mr.
Chips: an ideal-observer model of
reading. Psychological
Review, 104, 524–553.
Li, L., Li, S., Wang, J., McGowan, V. A., Liu, P., Jordan, T. R., & Paterson, K. B.
(2017) Aging
and the optimal viewing position effect in visual word
recognition: Evidence from
English. Psychology and
Aging, 32, 367–376.
Lima, S. D., & Inhoff, A. W.
(1985) Lexical
access during eye fixations in reading: Effects of
word-initial letter
sequence. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 11, 272–285.
Liversedge, S. P., Drieghe, D., Li, X., Yan, G., Bai, X., & Hyönä, J.
(2016) Universality
in eye movements and reading: A trilingual
investigation. Cognition, 147, 1–20.
McConkie, G. W., Kerr, P. W., Reddix, M. D., & Zola, D.
(1988) Eye
movement control during reading: I. The location of initial
eye fixations on
words. Vision
Research, 28, 1107–1118.
McConkie, G., & Rayner, K.
(1975) The
span of the effective stimulus during a fixation in
reading. Perception &
Psychophysics, 17, 578–586.
(1976) Asymmetry
of the perceptual span in
reading. Bulletin of The
Psychonomic
Society, 8, 365–368.
Morrison, R. E.
(1984) Manipulation
of stimulus onset delay in reading: Evidence for parallel
programming of
saccades. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 10, 667–682.
Nuthmann, A., Engbert, R., & Kliegl, R.
(2005) Mislocated
fixations during reading and the inverted optimal viewing
position effect. Vision
Research, 45, 2201–2217.
Olson, D. R., & Dringer, D.
(2020) Alphabet. Encyclopædia
Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Retrieved
on 27/8/20 from [URL]
O’Regan, J. K., & Jacobs, A. M.
(1992) Optimal
viewing position effect in word recognition: A challenge to
current theory. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 18, 185–197.
O’Regan, J. K., Lévy-Schoen, A., Pynte, J., & Brugaillère, B. É.
(1984) Convenient
fixation location within isolated words of different length
and structure. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 10, 250–257.
O’Regan, J. K.
(1980) The
control of saccade size and fixation duration in reading:
The limits of linguistic
control. Perception &
Psychophysics, 28, 112–117.
Paap, K. R., Newsome, S. L., McDonald, J. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W.
(1982) An
activation–verification model for letter and word
recognition: The word-superiority
effect. Psychological
Review, 89, 573–594.
Parker, A. J., Nikolova, M., Slattery, T. J., Liversedge, S. P., & Kirkby, J. A.
(2019) Binocular
coordination and return-sweep saccades among skilled adult
readers, Journal of
Vision, 19, 1–19.
Paterson, K. B., McGowan, V. A., & Jordan, T. R.
(2013) Aging
and the control of binocular fixations during
reading. Psychology and
Aging, 28, 789–795.
Paterson, K. B., McGowan, V. A., White, S. J., Malik, S., Abedipour, L., & Jordan, T. R.
(2014) Reading
direction and the central perceptual span in Urdu and
English. PloS
ONE, 9, e88358.
Paterson, K., Almabruk, A., McGowan, V., White, S., & Jordan, T.
(2015) Effects
of word length on eye movement control: The evidence from
Arabic. Psychonomic Bulletin
&
Review, 22, 1443–1450.
Perea, M., Abu Mallouh, R., Mohammed, A., Khalifa, B., & Carreiras, M.
(2016) Do
diacritical marks play a role at the early stages of word
recognition in
Arabic? Frontiers in
Psychology, 7, 1255.
Pollatsek, A., Bolozky, S., Well, A., & Rayner, K.
(1981) Asymmetries
in the perceptual span for Israeli
readers. Brain and
Language, 14, 174–180.
Pollatsek, A., Lesch, M., Morris, R., & Rayner, K.
(1992) Phonological
codes are used in integrating information across saccades in
word identification and
reading. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 18, 148–162.
Pollatsek, A., Reichle, E., & Rayner, K.
(2006) Tests
of the E-Z Reader model: Exploring the interface between
cognition and eye-movement
control. Cognitive
Psychology, 52, 1–56.
Rayner, K.
(1975a) Parafoveal
identification during a fixation in
reading. Acta
Psychologica, 39, 271–281.
(1975b) The
perceptual span and peripheral cues in
reading. Cognitive
Psychology, 7, 65–81.
(1978) Eye
movements in reading and information
processing. Psychological
Bulletin, 85, 618–660.
(1979) Eye
guidance in reading: Fixation locations within
words. Perception, 8, 21–30.
(1998) Eye
movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of
research. Psychological
Bulletin, 124, 372–422.
(2009) The
35th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: Eye movements and
attention in reading, scene perception, and visual
search. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental
Psychology, 62, 1457–1506.
(2014) The
gaze-contingent moving window in reading: Development and
review. Visual
Cognition, 22, 242–258.
Rayner, K., & Duffy, S.
(1986) Lexical
complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word
frequency, verb complexity, and lexical
ambiguity. Memory &
Cognition, 14, 191–201.
Rayner, K., & McConkie, G. W.
(1976) What
guides a reader’s eye
movements? Vision
Research, 16, 829–837.
Rayner, K., & Well, A. D.
(1996) Effects
of contextual constraint on eye movements in reading: A
further
examination. Psychonomic
Bulletin &
Review, 3, 504–509.
Rayner, K., Balota, D. A., & Pollatsek, A.
(1986) Against
parafoveal semantic preprocessing during eye fixations in
reading. Canadian Journal of
Psychology/Revue canadienne de
psychologie, 40, 473–483.
Rayner, K., McConkie, G., & Zola, D.
(1980) Integrating
information across eye
movements. Cognitive
Psychology, 12, 206–226.
Rayner, K., Sereno, S., & Raney, G. E.
(1996) Eye
movement control in reading: A comparison of two types of
model. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 22, 1188–1200.
Rayner, K., Slattery, T., Drieghe, D., & Liversedge, S.
(2011) Eye
movements and word skipping during reading: Effects of word
length and
predictability. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 37, 514–528.
Rayner, K., Well, A. D., & Pollatsek, A.
(1980) Asymmetry
of the effective visual field in
reading. Perception &
Psychophysics, 27, 537–544.
Rayner, K., Well, A. D., Pollatsek, A., & Bertera, J. H.
(1982) The
availability of useful information to the right of fixation
in reading. Perception &
Psychophysics, 31, 537–550.
Reichle, E. D., Pollatsek, A., Fisher, D. L., & Rayner, K.
(1998) Toward
a model of eye movement control in
reading. Psychological
Review, 105, 125–157.
Reichle, E. D., Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A.
(2003) The
EZ Reader model of eye-movement control in reading:
Comparisons to other
models. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 26, 445–476.
Reichle, E. D., Warren, T., & McConnell, K.
(2009) Using
EZ Reader to model the effects of higher level language
processing on eye movements during
reading. Psychonomic Bulletin
&
Review, 16, 1–21.
Roldán, M., Marcet, A., & Perea, M.
(2018) Is
there a cost at encoding words with joined letters during
visual word
recognition? Psicológica
Journal, 39, 279–291.
Roman, G., & Pavard, B.
(1987) A
comparative study: How we read in Arabic and
French. In J. K. O’Regan & A. Levy-Schoen (Eds.), Eye
movements from physiology to
cognition (pp. 431–440). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier.
Schotter, E. R., Angele, B., & Rayner, K.
(2012) Parafoveal
processing in
reading. Attention,
Perception &
Psychophysics, 74, 5–35.
Skeide, M. A., & Friederici, A. D.
(2018) Neurolinguistic
studies of sentence
comprehension. In E. Fernandez, & H. Cairns (Eds.), The
Handbook of
Psycholinguistics (pp. 438–456). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
Slattery, T. J., & Vasilev, M. R.
(2019) An
eye-movement exploration into return-sweep targeting during
reading. Attention,
Perception, &
Psychophysics, 1–7.
Snell, J., & Grainger, J.
(2019) Readers
are parallel
processors. Trends in
Cognitive
Sciences, 23(7), 537–546.
Snell, J., van Leipsig, S., Grainger, J., & Meeter, M.
(2018) OB1-reader:
A model of word recognition and eye movements in text
reading. Psychological
Review, 125, 969–984.
Staub, A.
(2015) The
effect of lexical predictability on eye movements in
reading: Critical review and theoretical
interpretation. Language and
Linguistics
Compass, 9, 311–327.
Stevens, M., & Grainger, J.
(2003) Letter
visibility and the viewing position effect in visual word
recognition. Perception &
Psychophysics, 65, 133–151.
Swaab, T. Y., Ledoux, K., Camblin, C. C., & Boudewyn, M. A.
(2012) Language-related
ERP
components. In E. S. Kappenman and S. J. Luck (Eds.), Oxford
handbook of event-related potential
components (pp. 397–440). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vitu, F., McConkie, G., Kerr, P., & O’Regan, J.
(2001) Fixation
location effects on fixation durations during reading: an
inverted optimal viewing position
effect. Vision
Research, 41, 3513–3533.
Vitu, F., O’Regan, J. K., & Mittau, M.
(1990) Optimal
landing position in reading isolated words and continuous
text. Perception &
Psychophysics, 47, 583–600.
Vitu, F., O’Regan, J. K., Inhoff, A. W., & Topolski, R.
(1995) Mindless
reading: Eye-movement characteristics are similar in
scanning letter strings and reading
texts. Perception &
Psychophysics, 57, 352–364.
White, S. J., Johnson, R. L., Liversedge, S. P., & Rayner, K.
(2008) Eye
movements when reading transposed text: The importance of
word-beginning
letters. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 34, 1261–1276.
Yakup, M., Abliz, W., Sereno, J., & Perea, M.
(2015) Extending
models of visual-word recognition to semicursive scripts:
Evidence from masked priming in
Uyghur. Journal of
Experimental Psuychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 41, 1553–1562.
Yan, M., Richter, E. M., Shu, H., & Kliegl, R.
(2009) Readers
of Chinese extract semantic information from parafoveal
words. Psychonomic Bulletin
&
Review, 16, 561–566.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
AlJassmi, Maryam A. & Manuel Perea
2024. Visual similarity effects in the identification of Arabic letters: evidence with masked priming. Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. 
AlJassmi, Maryam A., Kayleigh L. Warrington, Victoria A. McGowan, Sarah J. White & Kevin B. Paterson
2022. Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 84:1 ► pp. 10 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.