Re: General Interest: Reading Arabic isn't easy

Again, I would say that anyone genuinely interested in the 
questions involved might do well simply to have a look at 
exactly what the research articles in question were actually 
intended to communicate to us ( or, rather, to colleague 
specialists ) -- whatever a strangely very belated publicity 
piece from their authors' employer, taken over by Physorg 
( n.b., without even an explicit reference to that press 
release ), and others**, might have chosen to make of it for 
purposes of (semi)public consumption. 

Here's an extract from the Discussion section of the most 
recent ( March 2009 ) of the articles, for those who may 
not have access to the full text :  

"The results can be summarized thus: The sensitivity measures reveal that there 
is LH specialization for this language task in all of the conditions. In 
addition, these findings support our hypothesis that there is a specific RH 
deficit in reading Arabic, because that is the only condition (with bilateral 
presentation), where these native Arabic speakers responded at chance. Our 
results support hemispheric independence for nonwords and hemispheric 
interdependence for words in all of the languages. That is, in all of the 
languages, the RH was able to reject nonwords independently of the LH. The 
pattern for nonwords was consistent in our three indexes of hemispheric 
relations. For words, all three indexes suggested interhemispheric interactions 
when the participants were doing the task in Hebrew, and two out of the three 
were consistent with this hypothesis for Arabic and English. The findings reveal 
a pattern of similarities and differences in the processing of English, Hebrew, 
and MSA by native speakers of Arabic. . . . In sum, these findings reveal the 
dynamic properties of the hemispheric relations, reflecting the flexibility of 
the system when it has to deal with different types of stimuli. The 
morphological structures of the Semitic languages make it necessary of the RH to 
be sensitive to morphology (either on its own or by “using” LH facilities via 
interhemispheric channels). This pattern in discernable in Hebrew, which the RH 
can read, but not in Arabic, in which it has a specific difficulty, or in 
English, which does not require morphological decomposition."

In the press release, there is one quotation, purportedly 
reflecting what "the researchers concluded" -- but it's 
not, n.b., taken from this article. Indeed no source is 
given for it, but perhaps Rachel Feldman, English Editor 
at the university's News Office, who was responsible for the 
release, just called up or e-mailed one of them and asked 
for a pithy three-sentence quote that would sound good 
in wrapping up the release.

** e.g. :  ScienceDaily -- 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831102621.htm
  which at least has the decency to put "Brain Study Suggests" in its title

- Laval Hunsucker
   Breukelen, Nederland

----- Original Message ----
From: Patrick T. Rourke <ptrourke <at> GMAIL.COM>
To: CLASSICS-L <at> LSV.UKY.EDU
Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 5:50:41 PM
Subject: Re: [CLASSICS-L] General Interest: Reading Arabic isn't easy

For ideographic, read logographic.

P. T. Rourke 

On Sep 1, 2010, at 11:48 AM, "Patrick T. Rourke" <ptrourke <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> Because Chinese is an ideographic script, factors other than graphical 
>complexity would be introduced.
> 
> 
> P. T. Rourke 
> 
> On Sep 1, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Colin McLarty <colin.mclarty <at> CASE.EDU> wrote:
> 
>> 2010/9/1 Barbara Landis <magistralatina <at> gmail.com>:
>>> I agree. I had only two years of Arabic as an undergraduate and although I
>>> was initially intimidated by the script, I found it surprisingly easy to
>>> pick up once I began my studies.
>> 
>> And honestly, isn't it bizarre to take Arabic as the sample language
>> to explore whether  "graphic complexity" has neurological effects that
>> make reading acquisition harder in comparison to English?  Wouldn't
>> Chinese make a much clearer sample language for this purpose?
>> 
>> Colin