Papers by Abubaker Almabruk
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Sep 25, 2013
In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, useful information acquired du... more In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, useful information acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend much further to the right of each fixation than to the left. However, the asymmetry of the perceptual span for alphabetic languages read in the opposite direction (i.e., from right to left) has received very little attention. Accordingly, we investigated the perceptual span for Arabic, which is one of the world's most widely read languages and is read from right to left, using a gaze-contingent window paradigm in which a region of normal text was displayed around each point of fixation while information outside this region was obscured. Skilled Arabic readers who were bilingual in Arabic and English read Arabic and English sentences while a window of normal text extended symmetrically 0.5 o to the left and right of fixation, or asymmetrically by increasing the size of each window to 1.5 o or 2.5 o to either the left or right. When reading English, performance across these window conditions was superior when windows extended rightwards. However, when reading Arabic, performance was superior when windows extended leftwards, and was essentially the reverse of that observed for English. These findings provide a novel indication that the perceptual span is modified by the language being read to produce an asymmetry in the direction of reading, and shows for the first time that such an asymmetry occurs for reading Arabic.
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy At the University of Leicester
The Culture Of Television Advertising: An Historical And Empirical Analysis Of The Content Of Tel... more The Culture Of Television Advertising: An Historical And Empirical Analysis Of The Content Of Television Commercials And Of The Saudi Viewers Responses To Advertising. By Fahad Al-kheraiji, 1991 This exploratory study is to fill in some of the gaps in the current state of knowledge about the cultural exports of Multinational Corporations and Multinational Advertising Agencies. Another primary purpose of this research has been to investigate the nature of the relationship between advertising culture and Saudi television audiences and how this is reflected in both the content of television commercial and audience responses’. This study provides, firstly, a link between the past and present history of advertising in Saudi Arabia; secondly, it follows the detailed development of television advertising in Saudi Arabia from its inception in 1986 until 30th December 1989; thirdly, it indicates that the content of television commercials does not focus mainly on the selling intent (physical ...
Word Recognition and Reading in Arabic
The thesis reports six experiments investigating word recognition and reading in Arabic. Experime... more The thesis reports six experiments investigating word recognition and reading in Arabic. Experiment 1 looked at the word superiority effect in Arabic word recognition using brief presentations of stimuli (five-letter real words, pseudo-words, non-words, and inverted real words) in a Reicher-Wheeler task. The results of this experiment showed advantages for the recognition of words over pseudo-words and illegal non-words, and for pseudo-words over illegal non-words. Experiment 2 was a follow-up experiment that also examined the word superiority effect in Arabic by using the lexical decision task. In this experiment, participants viewed briefly presented real words and legal non-words, with the results showing that Arabic real words were recognised quicker and more accurately than non-words. Experiment 3 investigated the landing position effects for three, five, and seven letter words in Arabic using eye movements while reading. The results showed that the preferred viewing location (...
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester
PLoS ONE, 2014
Background: Normal reading relies on the reader making a series of saccadic eye movements along l... more Background: Normal reading relies on the reader making a series of saccadic eye movements along lines of text, separated by brief fixational pauses during which visual information is acquired from a region of text. In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, the region from which useful information is acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend further to the right of each fixation than to the left. However, the asymmetry of the perceptual span for alphabetic languages read in the opposite direction (i.e., from right to left) has received much less attention. Accordingly, in order to more fully investigate the asymmetry in the perceptual span for these languages, the present research assessed the influence of reading direction on the perceptual span for bilingual readers of Urdu and English. Methods and Findings: Text in Urdu and English was presented either entirely as normal or in a gaze-contingent movingwindow paradigm in which a region of text was displayed as normal at the reader's point of fixation and text outside this region was obscured. The windows of normal text extended symmetrically 0.5u of visual angle to the left and right of fixation, or asymmetrically by increasing the size of each window to 1.5u or 2.5u to either the left or right of fixation. When participants read English, performance for the window conditions was superior when windows extended to the right. However, when reading Urdu, performance was superior when windows extended to the left, and was essentially the reverse of that observed for English. Conclusion: These findings provide a novel indication that the perceptual span is modified by the language being read to produce an asymmetry in the direction of reading and show for the first time that such an asymmetry occurs for reading Urdu.
PloS one, Jan 29, 2011
Previous studies have claimed that a precise split at the vertical midline of each fovea causes a... more Previous studies have claimed that a precise split at the vertical midline of each fovea causes all words to the left and right of fixation to project to the opposite, contralateral hemisphere, and this division in hemispheric processing has considerable consequences for foveal word recognition. However, research in this area is dominated by the use of stimuli from Latinate languages, which may induce specific effects on performance. Consequently, we report two experiments using stimuli from a fundamentally different, non-Latinate language (Arabic) that offers an alternative way of revealing effects of split-foveal processing, if they exist.
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Perception, 2009
Abali, Mustafa 1721 Abdi, Herve�� 292 Adams, Reginald B Jr 1688 Adelstein, Bernard D 1560 Agostin... more Abali, Mustafa 1721 Abdi, Herve�� 292 Adams, Reginald B Jr 1688 Adelstein, Bernard D 1560 Agostini, Tiziano 164 Alais, David 966 Alexander, Tim 1536 Aliyeva, Gyulten Z 1721 Allen, Hannah 1821 Allik, Ju��ri 1649 Almeida, Vasco MN de 1109 Altschuler, Eric Lewin 1728 Ambady, Nalini 1688 Anderson, Barton L 869 Anderson, David J 988 Anes, Michael D 333 Anstis, Stuart 321, 923, 1405 Arendt-Nielsen, Lars 763 Ash, April 442 Atkinson, Janette 1575 Bailes, Freya 1386 Bar-Haim, Yair 145 Barlasov-Ioffe, Anna 1118 Barlow, Horace B 795, 804 ...
Perception, 2010
When alphabetic stimuli are presented very briefly, people perceive real words better than nonwor... more When alphabetic stimuli are presented very briefly, people perceive real words better than nonwords. It is generally accepted that this word superiority effect reflects the efficiency of visual word perception. However, much of what is known about this effect comes from research conducted in languages using the Latin alphabet (eg English, French, Italian), and little is known about whether alphabetic languages with visual properties fundamentally different from Latinate languages also produce word superiority effects. We report an experiment in which stimuli (words, illegal nonwords, and pseudowords) were presented in Arabic, which is a cursive script, read from right to left. The findings revealed advantages for words over pseudowords and illegal nonwords, and for pseudowords over illegal nonwords, indicating that the superiority effects reported for Latinate languages are also observed in Arabic. Implications of these findings for understanding the processes involved in word recognition are discussed.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
Exploring perceptual learning style preferences and their relationships with academic achievement... more Exploring perceptual learning style preferences and their relationships with academic achievement is important to success in teaching and learning language. The aim of this study, therefore, was to investigate the perceptual learning style preferences of Libyan EFL University students majoring in English at Omar Almukhtar University and to check whether there is a significant relationship between students’ perceptual learning style preferences and their academic achievement. A total of 75 fourth year English major students were participated in this study. A self-reporting learning style questionnaire developed by Kinsella (1994) was used to collect data and final semester examination scores were used to determine the average academic achievement for each participant. The findings showed that tactile style was the most dominant learning style among the students followed by auditory style while kinesthetic style was the least favoured learning style. The findings also revealed that th...
Background: Normal reading relies on the reader making a series of saccadic eye movements along l... more Background: Normal reading relies on the reader making a series of saccadic eye movements along lines of text, separated by brief fixational pauses during which visual information is acquired from a region of text. In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, the region from which useful information is acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend further to the right of each fixation than to the left. However, the asymmetry of the perceptual span for alphabetic languages read in the opposite direction (i.e., from right to left) has received much less attention. Accordingly, in order to more fully investigate the asymmetry in the perceptual span for these languages, the present research assessed the influence of reading direction on the perceptual span for bilingual readers of Urdu and English. Methods and Findings: Text in Urdu and English was presented either entirely as normal or in a gaze-contingent movingwindow paradigm in which a region of text was displayed as normal at the reader's point of fixation and text outside this region was obscured. The windows of normal text extended symmetrically 0.5u of visual angle to the left and right of fixation, or asymmetrically by increasing the size of each window to 1.5u or 2.5u to either the left or right of fixation. When participants read English, performance for the window conditions was superior when windows extended to the right. However, when reading Urdu, performance was superior when windows extended to the left, and was essentially the reverse of that observed for English. Conclusion: These findings provide a novel indication that the perceptual span is modified by the language being read to produce an asymmetry in the direction of reading and show for the first time that such an asymmetry occurs for reading Urdu.
Psychonomic Bulletin Review, Feb 18, 2015
The finding that word length plays a fundamental role in determining where and for how long reade... more The finding that word length plays a fundamental role in determining where and for how long readers fixate within a line of text has been central to the development of sophisticated models of eye movement control. However, research in this area is dominated by the use of Latinate languages (e.g., English, French, German), and little is known about eye movement control for alphabetic languages with very different visual characteristics. To address this issue, the present experiment undertook a novel investigation of the influence of word length on eye movement behavior when reading Arabic. Arabic is an alphabetic language that not only is read from right to left but has visual characteristics fundamentally different from Latinate languages, and so is ideally suited to testing the generality of mechanisms of eye movement control. The findings reveal that readers were more likely to fixate and refixate longer words, and also that longer words tended to be fixated for longer. In addition, word length influenced the landing positions of initial fixations on words, with the effect that readers fixated the center of short words and fixated closer to the beginning letters for longer words, and the location of landing positions affected both the duration of the first fixation and probability of refixating the word. The indication now, therefore, is that effects of word length are a widespread and fundamental component of reading and play a central role in guiding eye-movement behavior across a range of very different alphabetic systems. Keywords Arabic. Eye movements during reading. Eye movement control During reading, the eyes move along lines of text in a sequence of saccadic movements separated by brief fixational pauses during which visual information is acquired. This behavior results from changes in retinal acuity, which is greatest at the point of fixation and declines sharply with increasing eccentricity (Hilz & Cavonius, 1974). Saccadic eye movements compensate for this limited acuity by producing shifts in the location of fixations so that text previously located away from the point of fixation is brought into high acuity vision. Research on the spatial and temporal characteristics of eye movements is crucial for revealing the influence of the visual characteristics of text on when and where the eyes move during reading (e.g., Rayner, 2009), and is central to the development of models of eye movement control (e.g., Engbert, Nuthmann, Richter, & Kliegl 2005; Reichle, Rayner, & Pollatsek 2003). However, research on this topic has been conducted primarily in languages based on the Latin alphabet (e.g., English, French, German), and, while recent research has examined non-alphabetic languages like Chinese (e.g., Li, Liu, & Rayner 2011), little is known about eye movements for alphabetic languages with fundamentally different visual characteristics. Arabic is the second-most widely read alphabetic language (after English) across the globe, yet few studies have examined eye movements when reading Arabic (e.g., Roman & Pavard, 1987; Roman, Pavard, & Asseleh, 1985) and, with the exception of a recent investigation of the perceptual span (Jordan, Almabruk, et al., 2014), have not examined fundamental visual influences on eye movement control.
PloS one, 2011
Previous studies have claimed that a precise split at the vertical midline of each fovea causes a... more Previous studies have claimed that a precise split at the vertical midline of each fovea causes all words to the left and right of fixation to project to the opposite, contralateral hemisphere, and this division in hemispheric processing has considerable consequences for foveal word recognition. However, research in this area is dominated by the use of stimuli from Latinate languages, which may induce specific effects on performance. Consequently, we report two experiments using stimuli from a fundamentally different, non-Latinate language (Arabic) that offers an alternative way of revealing effects of split-foveal processing, if they exist.
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Papers by Abubaker Almabruk