Arabic semantic priming for homographs does not result in a boost to all related material

Abstract

PurposeThe aim of this study was to examine whether, when a person reads, there is a boost to all material related to the context in Najdi Arabic (NA) as was found in English in was found in Rodd et al. (2013). The study employs Arabic language features of orthographic style and diglossia to answer the research question.Design/methodology/approachForty-two participants were asked to come on two sessions to complete a reading task, a filler task and a word recognition task. The word recognition task included 14 homographs that could mean one thing in Modern Standard Arabic and another in NA.FindingsThe findings show that the assumption that all related materials are ready to be used when readers are exposed to the context is not valid for the two Arabic variants.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation of this study was that the participants were all female.Originality/valueThe findings could help writers write better texts to help individuals who struggle with reading comprehension whether it is because of dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as when researchers understand how priming works, they might be able to help readers in their reading fluency and comprehension (Rodd et al., 2016). This could be by producing better texts to comprehend or using semantic priming in classroom setups.