Manipulating Interword and Interletter Spacing in Cursive Script: An Eye Movements Investigation of Reading Persian.

Ehab W Hermena

doi:10.16910/jemr.14.1.6

Abstract

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language that features a derivation of Arabic cursive script, where most letters within words are connectable to adjacent letters with ligatures. Two experiments are reported where the properties of Persian script were utilized to investigate the effects of reducing interword spacing and increasing the interletter distance (ligature) within a word. Experiment 1 revealed that decreasing interword spacing while extending interletter ligature by the same amount was detrimental to reading speed. Experiment 2 largely replicated these findings. The experiments show that providing the readers with inaccurate word boundary information is detrimental to reading rate. This was achieved by reducing the interword space that follows letters that do not connect to the next letter in Experiment 1, and replacing the interword space with ligature that connected the words in Experiment 2. In both experiments, readers were able to comprehend the text read, despite the considerable costs to reading rates in the experimental conditions.

Highlights

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language, a subdivision of Indo-European languages (Windfuhr, 1987)
Global eye movement measures that index sentence processing are reported. These are: the average duration of fixations made during sentence reading, average number of fixations made, total sentence reading time, and average amplitude of saccades made during sentence reading
The reported experiments aimed to use the properties of Persian script to explore how eye movement behavior and reading performance were affected by: (a) reducing interword spacing, while increasing the interletter distance within words, and (b) replacing the interword space with connecting ligature

Summary

Introduction

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language, a subdivision of Indo-European languages (Windfuhr, 1987). It is estimated to be spoken by about 110 million people worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language). Modern Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, features thirty-two letters. Similar to Arabic script, Persian script is written from right-to-left. It is a cursive script, with the majority of the letters connected with ligatures within words. As the case with the majority of Received April 8, 2021; Published May 31, 2021. Manipulating interword and interletter spacing in cursive script: An eye movements investigation of reading Persian.

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Conclusion