Investigating Cognitive Processes Underlying Reading in Arabic: Evidence from Typical and Poor Reading Performance

Haitham Taha

doi:10.4236/psych.2013.412148

Abstract

The current study has examined by which cognitive factors at the field of phonological and visual processing, rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness, contribute to reading and decoding abilities among typical and poor native Arabic readers. In the current study, the performances of two groups of participants, typical and poor readers were compared through tasks that examined their performance with regard to the areas of functions mentioned above in addition to other tasks that examined their performance in reading meaningful and pseudo words. The study’s results have indicated that the visual and phonological processing skills play an important role in reading among typical and poor readers as well. Moreover, it was found that the visual and phonological processing skills of participants with poor reading skills were lower in comparison to participants with typical reading abilities.

Highlights

The process of reading acquisition is regarded as complex and relies on the development of various cognitive processes
Many researchers suggest that normal development of phonological processing skills, such as phonemic segmentation and phonemic blending, is acquired as the reader enjoys a normal phonological awareness regarding the speaking sounds which composed the spoken words (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004, 2006; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Share, 1995; Snowling, Goulandris, & Defty, 1996; Stanovich, 1988; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005)
Calculating Person correlation indicates that in reading pseudo words there is a significant and positive correlation (r = 0.34, p < 0.01) with the processes of visual distinction measured through the Beery test

Summary

Introduction

The process of reading acquisition is regarded as complex and relies on the development of various cognitive processes. Many researchers suggest that normal development of phonological processing skills, such as phonemic segmentation and phonemic blending, is acquired as the reader enjoys a normal phonological awareness regarding the speaking sounds which composed the spoken words (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004, 2006; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Share, 1995; Snowling, Goulandris, & Defty, 1996; Stanovich, 1988; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) Those phonological processing skills are found to be main contributor to reading acquisition in several alphabetic orthographies and are affected mutually by the exposure to print (Ziegler et al, 2010; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). The study at the field of the reading acquisition and its development discerns that among readers with difficulties, those with reading disability, an inadequate performance in tasks that investigate phonological awareness was found (Snowling, 2001; Stanovich, 1986; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004)

Methods

Results

Conclusion