TY - JOUR
T1 - What the Eyes Hear
T2 - An Eye-Tracking Study on Phonological Awareness in Emirati Arabic
AU - Marquis, Alexandra
AU - Kaabi, Meera Al
AU - Leung, Tommi
AU - Boush, Fatima
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2020 Marquis, Al Kaabi, Leung and Boush.
PY - 2020/3/17
Y1 - 2020/3/17
N2 - Phonological awareness is the ability to perceive and manipulate the sounds of spoken words. It is considered a good predictor of reading and spelling abilities. In the current study, we used an eye-tracking procedure to measure fixation differences while adults completed three conditions of phonological awareness in Emirati Arabic (EA): (1) explicit instructions for onset consonant matching (OCM), (2) implicit instructions for segmentation of initial consonant (SIC), and (3) rhyme matching (RM). We hypothesized that fixation indices would vary according to the experimental conditions. We expected explicit instructions to facilitate task performance. Thus, eye movements should reflect more efficient fixation patterns in the explicit OCM condition in comparison to the implicit SIC condition. Moreover, since Arabic is consonant-based, we hypothesized that participants would perform better in the consonant conditions (i.e., OCM and SIC) than in the rhyme condition (i.e., RM). Finally, we expected that providing feedback during practice trials would facilitate participants’ performance overall. Response accuracy, expressed as a percentage of correct responses, was recorded alongside eye movement data. Results show that performance was significantly compromised in the RM condition, where targets received more fixations of longer average duration, and significantly longer gaze durations in comparison to the OCM and SIC conditions. Response accuracy was also significantly lower in the RM condition. Our results indicate that eye-tracking can be used as a tool to test phonological awareness skills and shows differences in performance between tasks containing a vowel or consonant manipulation.
AB - Phonological awareness is the ability to perceive and manipulate the sounds of spoken words. It is considered a good predictor of reading and spelling abilities. In the current study, we used an eye-tracking procedure to measure fixation differences while adults completed three conditions of phonological awareness in Emirati Arabic (EA): (1) explicit instructions for onset consonant matching (OCM), (2) implicit instructions for segmentation of initial consonant (SIC), and (3) rhyme matching (RM). We hypothesized that fixation indices would vary according to the experimental conditions. We expected explicit instructions to facilitate task performance. Thus, eye movements should reflect more efficient fixation patterns in the explicit OCM condition in comparison to the implicit SIC condition. Moreover, since Arabic is consonant-based, we hypothesized that participants would perform better in the consonant conditions (i.e., OCM and SIC) than in the rhyme condition (i.e., RM). Finally, we expected that providing feedback during practice trials would facilitate participants’ performance overall. Response accuracy, expressed as a percentage of correct responses, was recorded alongside eye movement data. Results show that performance was significantly compromised in the RM condition, where targets received more fixations of longer average duration, and significantly longer gaze durations in comparison to the OCM and SIC conditions. Response accuracy was also significantly lower in the RM condition. Our results indicate that eye-tracking can be used as a tool to test phonological awareness skills and shows differences in performance between tasks containing a vowel or consonant manipulation.
KW - Arabic language
KW - Emirati Arabic (EA)
KW - adults
KW - eye-tracking
KW - neurolinguistics
KW - phonological awareness
KW - word recognition
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082650985&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85082650985&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00452
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00452
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85082650985
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 11
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
M1 - 452
ER -