Hebrew Speakers Research Articles

Migration and Food Consumption: The Impact of Culture and Country of Origin on Obesity as an Indicator of Human Health

Previous research demonstrates that the 1965 American immigration wave has tended to attenuate the obesity pandemic in the United States. Based on a survey carried out by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) in 2012 and 2016, we observe the correlation between BMI, age, native language, and years-since-migration to Israel. BMI (=kgm2) is a conventional measure of obesity, where BMI ≥ 25 is considered overweight and BMI ≥ 30 as type I obesity. The results indicate that compared to 11 groups of immigrants, the median BMI among native Israelis is lower. While the prevalence of overweight (BMI ≥ 25) among Hebrew speakers is below 50%, in 11 groups of immigrants, the prevalence of overweight is above 50%. A noteworthy exception is the immigrants from Ethiopia, who exhibit lower overweight prevalence compared to native Israelis and all other population groups. Finally, while male Hebrew and Russian speakers cross the overweight benchmark at the same age (35 years), native Israeli women (Hebrew speakers) cross this benchmark only when they reach 50 years (15 years after the males) and Russian women cross this benchmark only five years after the Russian men. These research findings may be of assistance in public health and culture-oriented medicine.

Short-term memory capacity and sensitivity to language statistics in dyslexia and among musicians

Poor short-term memory (STM) capacity in individuals with dyslexia (IDDs) and enhanced STM capacity in musicians are well documented, yet their causes are disputed. Previous studies also found poor use of stimuli statistics by IDDs and enhanced use by musicians. We hypothesized that these observations are functionally related, as follows: Enhanced sensitivity to statistics facilitates musicians' benefit from each exposure, and reduced sensitivity to statistics hinders IDDs' benefit. Thus, larger group differences are expected for larger exposure: STM capacity, which is sensitive to item familiarity, will thus be larger among musicians, and smaller among IDDS, particularly for high-frequency items. Testing this hypothesis using syllable span, we found that musicians' advantage and IDDs' difficulty were indeed larger for high-frequency syllables than for low-frequency ones. By contrast, benefits from sequence repetition did not differ between musicians, controls and IDDs, suggesting that online sequence learning is based on a different mechanism. To test this dissociation we recruited, in addition to native Hebrew speakers, native English speakers, matched to the Hebrew-speaking controls. Their spans for high-frequency syllables in Hebrew, which do not have high frequency in English, were small - as expected from reduced exposure to these syllables. Yet, their benefit from sequence repetition was similar to that of the three Hebrew-speaking groups. Taken together, these experiments suggest that different sensitivities to item frequency explain some of the population-related variability in STM tasks. By contrast, benefits from sequence repetition do not depend on item familiarity, and do not differ between groups.

The two‐sided nature of reliance on prior knowledge and on L1/L2 structural similarity in L2 sentence comprehension

AbstractThe study explored the contribution of prior knowledge and reliance on L1 syntactic knowledge to L2 written sentence comprehension. Participants, 102 native Hebrew speakers at three education levels (junior high, high school, and postsecondary), answered questions in two sentence categories: Semantically plausible sentences that readers can understand by linking their content words to prior knowledge; semantically neutral sentences, whose comprehension requires adequate syntactic processing. To track the benefits of linguistic transfer from Hebrew (L1) to English (L2), the study manipulated the languages’ cross‐linguistic structural similarity. The results suggest that Hebrew‐speaking students rely on prior knowledge and/or on structural similarities between Hebrew and English to interpret English sentences. When they cannot rely on either of these two factors, they manifest remarkably poor understanding of quite basic English constructions even at the postsecondary level.

The contribution of cognitive and linguistic skills in L1 and EFL to English spelling among native speakers of Arabic and Hebrew

Learning to spell accurately is a fundamental, yet understudied, component of becoming literate across languages, particularly spelling across typologically different languages within the same individual. This study explored L1 and English as a foreign language (EFL) contributors to EFL spelling among fifth grade Hebrew (N = 190) and Arabic (N = 164) speakers. These languages were chosen because of shared typological features. Cognitive (RAN, phonological awareness) and linguistic tasks (reading, spelling, letter name, orthographic, morphological awareness) were administered in L1 and EFL. Correlational patterns were different for each group, as were L1 contributors in the regression models. However, when EFL tasks were added to the models, only EFL reading and orthographic skills contributing to EFL spelling for both language groups. a Performance pattern differences highlight the importance of exploring spelling in multilingual settings, across different language typologies, particularly in light of the fact that many EFL classes are comprised of learners from different L1 backgrounds.

Judging Hebrew adjective agreement across development: syntactic and morpho-syntactic awareness

Grammatical awareness of syntax and morphology is important in children’s literacy development for both reading and writing. Hebrew, a language with rich inflectional morphology, marks nouns for plural number in conjunction with gender. Hebrew attributive adjectives agree with noun number and gender in the same noun phrase, while predicative adjectives are in agreement with the grammatical subject in the same clause. Since adjectives are dependent on nouns, regularity or irregularity of plural marking on nouns directly affects plural agreement marking on adjectives. Given the importance of word order to Hebrew syntactic acquisition, the syntactic positions and functions of adjectives should also play a role in learning to inflect them. The current study examined Hebrew speakers’ developing ability to correctly identify adjective agreement with plural nouns given noun (ir)regularity and adjective syntactic position in children, adolescents, younger and older adults. Accuracy and reaction time were the measures used to trace this development. Findings showed that judgment increased in accuracy and decreased in RT, with feminine noun gender in conjunction with suffix irregularity challenging acquisition. Processing factors associated with the position and syntactic function of the adjective enhanced this difficulty sometimes even in adults. These results shed light on the psycholinguistic mechanisms used in syntactic and morphological judgment and on the ways they change with age and schooling.

Spatial biases in mental arithmetic are independent of reading/writing habits: Evidence from French and Arabic speakers

The representation of numbers in human adults is linked to space. In Western cultures, small and large numbers are associated respectively with the left and right sides of space. An influential framework attributes the emergence of these spatial-numerical associations (SNAs) to cultural factors such as the direction of reading and writing, because SNAs were found to be reduced or inverted in right-to-left readers/writers (e.g., Arabic, Farsi, or Hebrew speakers). However, recent cross-cultural and animal studies cast doubt on the determining role of reading and writing directions on SNAs. In this study, we assessed this role in mental arithmetic, which requires explicit number manipulations and has revealed robust leftward or rightward biases in Western participants. We used a temporal order judgement task in French and Arabic speakers, two languages that have opposite reading/writing directions. Participants had to solve subtraction and addition problems presented auditorily while at the same time determining which of a left or right visual target appeared first on a screen. The results showed that the right target was favoured more often when solving additions than when solving subtractions both in the French- (n = 31) and Arabic-speaking (n = 25) groups. This was true even in Arabic-speaking participants whose preference for ordering of various series of numerical and non-numerical stimuli went from right to left (n = 10). These results indicate that SNAs in mental arithmetic cannot be explained by the direction of reading/writing habits and call for a reconsideration of current models to acknowledge the pervasive role of biological factors in SNAs in adults.

Morpho-Orthographic Complexity in Affix Spelling in Hebrew: A Novel Psycholinguistic Outlook Across the School Years.

The current study examined the factors underlying native Hebrew speakers’ ability to learn homophonous affix spelling. It takes a novel view in investigating the effect of morpho-orthographic complexity of affix representation on the development of affix spelling across the school years. The role of five morpho-orthographic principles in homophonous affix letter spelling was studied: (i) morpho-orthographic transparency; (ii) affix letter prevalence; (iii) morpho-phonological competition; (iv) overtness of the phonological-orthographic link; and (v) phono-morpho-orthographic consistency. Taken together, these five principles of affix spelling constitute complexity metrics that pinpoint the loci of spelling challenge in homophonous Hebrew affixes. Study participants were 83 monolingual Hebrew-speaking students in four grade levels – 2nd, 4th, 7th, and 10th grades. The research instrument was a spelling task of 244 words containing affix letters in 57 morphological categories. The affixes appearing in the target words represented 56 different affix categories, covering all non-root morphological roles, both inflectional and derivational. While correct spelling increased across grade levels, a hierarchy emerged in interaction with grade level regarding these criteria: Younger spellers were mostly assisted by morpho-orthographic sites, morphological category frequency, and phonological transparency – while spelling in higher grade levels was more affected by morpho-orthographic prevalence. Thus, knowledge of how morphological roles are deployed in the orthography emerges as the most significant factor that affects learning to spell affix letters in Hebrew.

Acquisition and Development of Verb/Predicate Chaining in Hebrew.

The study considers development and use of verb/predicate chaining constructions by Hebrew speakers from early childhood to adolescence, based on analysis of authentic conversational and narrative corpora. Three types of constructions are analyzed, ordered hierarchically by degree of cohesivity and obligatoriness of chaining: (1) monoclausal complex predicates (the “extended predicates” of traditional Hebrew grammars); (2) coreferential interclausal predicate chaining; and (3) discursively motivated topic chaining. Relevant typological features of Modern Hebrew are reviewed as accounting for the absence of canonical clause chaining in the language (the paucity of non-finite constructions in everyday usage, absence of an uninflected basic form of verbs, lack of auxiliary verbs, and monolexemic verb-internal complexity). Monoclausal verb chaining emerges early in the speech of toddlers in interaction with their caretakers, whereas predicate chaining by coordination across clauses occurs only later, and chunking of such constructions at the service of discourse connectivity is found only from school-age. Non-finite subordination emerges as an advanced form of clause combining, in contrast to straightforward subordination with the multifunctional subordinator še ‘that’. Two main conclusions follow from the study: First, the innovative hierarchy defined here for different degrees of verb/predicate linkage mirrors developmental phases in child language; and, second, monoclausal chains of finite verbs or verbal operators followed by infinitival complements are grammatically obligatory, and are common from an early age, whereas bi- and multi-clausal predicate chaining represents an optional rhetorical choice on the part of a given speaker–writer in a particular communicative context.

Speaking Hebrew to Individuals in a Group: Psycho Logical Incompatibility and Processing Coast

Hebrew speakers cannot address directly individuals within a group. This derives from the prevalent use of the second person plural masculine form, which abandons individuals’ identity. The use of masculine form as a default makes it especially difficult for females. These psycho logical characteristics of Hebrew require individual listeners within a group to process an instantaneous correction: males, from plural form to singular and females, from plural to singular and from masculine to female. Two reaction time (RT) experiments were purported to examine cognitive implications of these characteristics for speakers of Hebrew as L1. Each participant was required to respond promptly to a series of 60 nouns in Hebrew, equally divided between second person singular and second person plural male form. In Experiment 1 it took longer for each of the 57 adults (30 men, 27 women) to respond to the second person plural masculine form. Women’s RT in such conditions was longer. Experiment 2 found a similar trend, with greater RT, in 5 - 6-year-old children (15 boys and 15 girls). A new sub-field of cognitive research, which can be called “Psycho logical incompatibility” or “Corrective language processing”, is suggested, depending on future support for the present findings.

The Development of Young Children’s Mental Timeline in Relation to Emergent Literacy Skills

ABSTRACTThe abstract concept of time is conceptualized as moving linearly across space, known as the mental timeline (MTL). The direction of our MTL is consistent with reading direction. English speakers, who read left to right, think of past on the left and future on the right; the reverse is true of Hebrew speakers, who read right to left. However, it is unknown whether familiarity with reading direction facilitates the development of the MTL or whether it develops prior to becoming familiar with a language’s direction. This study examined the relationship between the development of the MTL and emergent literacy skills in English-speaking preschoolers and kindergartners. Results reveal a preference for spatially displaying time as moving horizontally from left to right in preschoolers, which is strengthened in kindergartners and predicted by emergent literacy skills. Results indicate that emergent literacy skills are related to the early development of the MTL, providing insight into the origins of the mental timeline.

Contact between Old Persian and Hebrew? A Rejoinder to A. Wilson-Wright

Abstract In his recent article “From Persepolis to Jerusalem: A Reevaluation of Old Persian-Hebrew Contact in the Achaemenid Period”, Aren Wilson-Wright reexamines the list of proposed Persian loans in Biblical Hebrew as well as their distribution, specifically in relation to the distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew. He seeks to demonstrate direct contact between speakers of Old Persian and Hebrew and proposes two further Old Persian calques. This paper reevaluates Wilson-Wright’s proposals on both methodological and philological levels, and offers a fuller dataset for several phenomena. While allowing the principal distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew, questions of textual genesis and transmission are combined with sociolinguistic considerations to explore the possible ramifications of the proposed linguistic interaction: What do we know about the use of Old Persian apart from royal inscriptions? What do we know about Iranians, locals and their use of language in the Achaemenid administration? The result is a much more complex picture of multiple linguistic interference with many unknowns.

Reading Motivation in Kindergartners and 1st-Graders

ABSTRACTThe current research examined age differences and developmental aspects associated with children’s early motivation to read at the beginning and the end of the school year for 119 Hebrew speakers in kindergarten and 1st grade. Analyses showed that overall motivation to read was higher among 1st-graders than among kindergartners. In addition, motivation to read increased during the school year for kindergartners, but not for 1st-graders. After comparing the three motivational subscales, results revealed that self-concept as a reader appeared to be the highest subscale among 1st-graders and remained unchanged, whereas in kindergarten it was the lowest and improved during the school year. It is possible that both anticipation to enter 1st grade and to learn to read as well as learning in an encouraging educational environment might be positive motives that contribute to reading motivation. Children’s motivation to read seems to develop and change during the kindergarten school year and consolidate in 1st grade. Motivational aspects should be assimilated as early as kindergarten before formal reading instruction begins in 1st grade to increase reading motivation and reading practice, due to their reciprocal relationship.

Tip of the tongue after any language: Reintroducing the notion of blocked retrieval

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states often entail a phenomenological sense that retrieval is blocked, but incomplete activation is more commonly assumed as the underlying mechanism. Bilinguals have more TOTs than monolinguals, and commonly report that one language feels less accessible after immersion in another although evidence for this is minimal. Kreiner and Degani (2015) reported Russian-Hebrew bilinguals had more TOTs for Hebrew words after watching a movie in Russian, and surprisingly, native Hebrew speakers who did not know Russian also had more TOTs. Aiming to replicate this work, 72 Spanish-English bilinguals and 72 monolinguals completed a similar protocol in Experiment 1. Bilinguals and monolinguals exhibited significant and similarly sized interference effects after watching a Spanish movie. In Experiment 2, monolinguals completed five conditions: (a) Russian movie, (b) Spanish with English subtitles movie, (c) American Sign Language movie, (d) Spanish movie without audio and instructions to copy movements, and (e) a non-linguistic control (playing Tetris). All but the last two conditions elicited interference (increased TOTs and reduced correct retrievals). We suggest that even a brief pseudo-immersion experience can interfere with lexical-retrieval in the dominant language possibly via whole-language inhibition, supporting notions of blocked retrieval, albeit not at the level of individual lexical representations as previously proposed.

Reading and spelling processes in EFL amongst Hebrew and Arabic speakers of differing ability levels: similarities and differences

The present study examined reading and spelling of regular and irregular words in English as a foreign language (EFL) amongst 4th-grade native Arabic and Hebrew speakers. The reading and spelling t...

Picture This: A Review of Research Relating to Narrative Processing by Moving Image Versus Language.

Reading fiction for pleasure is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading or hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image or text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative. We note that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery, and personal memory (Xu et al., 2005). Attempts to compare the two by creating equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges. We discuss the difficulties of such comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media and propose internal scene construction and working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on concentrate on English-speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew, and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community.

Another Temporal Processing Deficit in Individuals With Developmental Dyslexia: The Case of Normalization for Speaking Rate.

Purpose Developmental dyslexia (DD) has mostly been attributed to arise from phonological impairments; however, several theories indicate a temporal processing deficit as the underlying cause of DD. So far, research examined the influence of temporal cues on concurrent speech sound categorization in DD, but effects of temporal information from a context (e.g., speaking rate) on the perception of subsequent sounds (i.e., "rate normalization") have not been considered. This study examined whether individuals with DD are capable of implicitly extracting temporal information embedded in context and use it for phoneme categorization to the same extent as healthy readers. Method Fifteen individuals diagnosed with DD and 16 healthy readers, all native speakers of Hebrew, listened to context sentences followed by target words. They had to indicate whether the target word sounded more like taam ("taste"; a long-vowel response) or tam ("naïve"; a short-vowel response). Temporal information of the context was manipulated (slow vs. fast speaking rate sentences) as well as the vowel duration of the target in a 5-step continuum. Results Listeners with DD did use the rate context to inform their decisions but to a significantly lesser extent than healthy listeners. In addition, their categorization of the vowel duration continuum was somewhat less distinct than that of the control group. Conclusions Individuals with DD are impaired not only in tasks involving direct temporal processing, as shown in previous studies but also in the use of temporal information of a context that impacts the perception of subsequent target words. This inability to fully utilize rate normalization processes may influence the formation of abstract phonological representations in individuals with DD.

Level of directness and the use of please in requests in English by native speakers of Arabic and Hebrew

This study explored the effects of the interlocutors' power/social status on the mode of directness and the use of the politeness marker please in the production of requests by advanced L1 Hebrew and L1 Arabic speakers of English. Data were collected by using a Discourse Completion Task. The results showed that the use of direct requests decreased and the use of indirect requests increased in both groups of speakers as the status of the addressee went from lower to higher than the speaker. However, the pattern of influence of the status factor differed between groups in the case of please. Specifically, L1 Arabic speakers exhibited the greatest use of please in FL English when the addressee was either lower or higher in status than the speaker, whereas the L1 Hebrew speakers only exhibited a preference for the use of please when the addressee was lower in status than the speaker. These findings are discussed in terms of the relative influence of the native language and culture, knowledge of the target English language, and in the case of L1 Arabic speakers, the influence of Hebrew as well.

Frequency effects on spelling in Hebrew-speaking younger and older adults

AbstractPrevious research has documented conflicting findings regarding the effect of word frequency on spelling in older adults. The current study examines spelling in Hebrew, in which it is easier to define the type of likely misspellings in each word. Younger and older Hebrew speakers spelled 120 single words that differed in word and letter frequency. Results show that all participants made more phonological substitutions of target letters on low-frequency words and on words with low-frequency letters. Yet, younger adults had a lower percentage of correct responses than did older adults, especially on low-frequency words. Vocabulary knowledge eliminated this age effect. We suggest that aging leads to greater reliance on full lexical retrieval of spelling instead of on sublexical phoneme-to-grapheme processing, due to years of exposure to written language, increase in vocabulary, and consolidation of orthographic representations.

How Individual Differences Affect Learning of Translation‐Ambiguous Vocabulary

AbstractThis study examined interactions of word and learner characteristics during foreign vocabulary learning, focusing on translation ambiguity and individual differences in cognitive resources and linguistic background (language proficiency, multilingual experience). Fifty‐three native Hebrew speakers and Russian–Hebrew multilinguals learned the phonological form of target Arabic words along with their Hebrew translations and definitions. The mapping could be translation ambiguous, with a single Hebrew word translated into two Arabic words (one‐to‐many) or translation unambiguous (one‐to‐one mapping). Results from translation production and meaning recognition tests revealed that translation‐ambiguous words were more difficult to learn than translation‐unambiguous words. This disadvantage did not dissipate with time, and learners’ phonological short‐term memory was associated with increased translation ambiguity costs. Learners’ proficiency in the language through which learning took place (Hebrew), but not degree of multilingualism, modulated learning. Findings underscore the importance of item and learner interactions, clarifying the multilingualism effect in novel language learning.

Attitudes and Knowledge About Learning Disabilities: A Comparison Between Arabic- and Hebrew-Speaking University Students

Recently, there has been a significant increase in the number of students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) in postsecondary institutions. The current study investigated attitudes toward and knowledge about SLD among students from different cultural and educational backgrounds. The study included 113 students (63 Arabic speakers and 50 Hebrew speakers) working toward bachelor’s degrees in different faculties and departments at a university in northern Israel. Findings indicated that both Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking students had some knowledge regarding SLD and agreed with positive statements about SLD. However, Arabic-speaking students reported having less contact with individuals with SLD than did Hebrew-speaking students. Additionally, Arabic-speaking students reported less knowledge regarding the competence of students with SLD and were more willing to support and provide assistance to these students. Both groups revealed insufficient understanding of the essence of SLD. Implications for research and practice are discussed.