Literacy

In the field of literacy, our members are studying the normal and abnormal development of reading abilities in Hebrew and Arabic.

Hebrew

This year brought new challenges and developments in Prof. Tami Katzir’s lab. As  distant learning has become the main venue of education around the world, together with her students and collaborators she explored issues related to reading from screen vs. reading from paper.

Doctoral student Shahar Dotan, supervised by Prof. Katzir, led a study on 120 teachers’ perceptions on distant teaching of reading.

In another study supervised by Prof. Katzir, doctoral student Yael Meer examined university students’ time perception when reading from paper vs. reading from screens.

Together with Master’s student Shani Halgoa, Prof. Katzir looked at reading anxiety when reading from screen and how it affects students with and without ADHD.

These studies are especially timely in the new reality of the coronavirus.

In her research on early literacy and numeracy skills, Dr. Shelley Shaul focuses on the different cognitive abilities underlying the learning of reading and mathematical abilities, from early literacy and numeracy skills in kindergarten children to first and second graders. In particular, she has investigated the role of executive functions, such as inhibition and flexibility, and working memory in early literacy and numeracy skills (linguistic and numeric abilities), and reading and math in the first grades, in Hebrew and Arabic. In addition, Shelley is investigating the association between reading and math abilities from kindergarten through first grade, an association that is being examined in both Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking children.

This current year several additional aspects of early literacy and numeracy were examined, such as SES and gender, in addition to several personal and emotional aspects such as self-perception of reading and motivation among kindergarten children. Dr. Shaul’s research in the last few years has led to the development of an intervention program for kindergarten children to strengthen their early literacy and numeracy skills as well as their cognitive and emotional skills. Furthermore, a large study was conducted on the role of visual processing in reading acquisition in 4^th graders.

In line with dyslexia subtypes, Zofit Vatebo, a PhD student supervised by Prof. Shany and Dr. Shaul, is investigating the contribution of visual processing skills to reading development in the Hebrew orthography among Grade 1 children.  Her study may shed light on the visual sources of word reading difficulties among children with a selective deficit in reading rate or accuracy.

Prof. Zohar Eviatar has several ongoing collaborations centering around psycholinguistics. With Dr. Hamutal Kreiner, she is exploring both theoretical and experimental aspects of speech prosody as an index of language simulation in the context of embodiment models of language.

In a separate project, Prof. Eviatar is examining the structural and psychological components of expressive texts produced by individuals who have experienced trauma, and exploring the relationship of these components to changes in well-being following writing.

With Prof. Shimshon Rubin she is using a different approach to text analysis to examine the course of grief expressed by adults who have lost a parent and have produced descriptive texts.

Arabic

Rana Yassin, a PhD student supervised by Prof. David Share and Dr. Yasmin Shalhoub-Awwad, examined the impact of visual-orthographic features of Arabic orthography (letter-form similarity, allography, ligaturing, and non-linearity) on the spelling of young children.

This study focuses on the impact of four distinctive visual-orthographic features of the Arabic abjad on spelling, namely (i) the similarity of many basic letter-forms, (ii) allography )the positional variants of the letter forms), (iii) ligaturing (the joining of letters), and (iv) non-linearity (extra-linear diacritic-like signs used to mark consonantal, short vowel, and morpho-syntactic distinctions). The distribution of visual-orthographic spelling errors was examined across three grade levels, as well as the developmental changes in these errors. We predicted that these errors would account for a significant proportion of children’s spelling errors. Ninety-six Arabic-speaking pupils from three elementary grades (1st, 2nd, and 4th grades) were presented with a sequence of six pictures and asked to write a story or several sentences about the events depicted. All spelling errors were analyzed and categorized according to two types of categories: six visual-orthographic categories and six additional categories that relate to the more traditional error types (e.g., phonological).

The results showed that the visual-orthographic category was the second most common error category across the three grade levels, accounting for over one quarter of all spelling errors.  Ligaturing and letter shape formation errors emerged as the two most prevalent types of errors in this category. These findings clearly demonstrate that visual-orthographic features of the Arabic abjad pose significant challenges in learning to spell.

On the research front, Dr. Yasmin Shalhoub-Awwad is conducting a more in-depth state-of-the-art linguistic study with a particular focus on Arabic morphology. This is an issue that has been studied so far among adult readers and is at present being led by Dr. Shalhoub-Awwad from a developmental perspective, while connecting it and its impact to the acquisition of reading in Arabic. She examined the lexical status of two derivational morphemes in Arabic: roots and nominal patterns among developing readers. In the current academic year she began an examination of the lexical status of verbal patterns in visual word recognition among developing Arabic readers (co-supervised by Prof. David Share). In another study, she is investigating morphological processing in visual word recognition among dyslexic adolescents (co-supervised by Prof. David Share). The study examines whether adolescent readers with dyslexia rely on the Arabic root morpheme during visual word recognition. In yet another study, she is investigating the contribution of morphological awareness (MA) to reading comprehension and word reading in Arabic (co-supervised by Prof. David Share).

As part of the Safra 4 longitudinal study, three doctoral studies are being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Yasmin Shalhoub-Awwad (co-supervised by Prof. David Share): one focusing on dyslexia in Arabic, the second on the development of spelling ability in Arabic, and the third on morphological awareness in reading and spelling acquisition in a diglossic context.

Prof. Michal Shany and her colleagues, Prof. David Share and Dr. Ibrahim Asadi, are working on expanding our understanding of subtypes of dyslexia in the Arabic language, among a national representative sample of fourth graders. Preliminary results indicate that on average, children with accuracy deficits in single word reading are –0.45 below national norms on a composite language measure (phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary). Other results from Or Wies’ thesis (supervised by Prof. Michal Shany and Prof. David Share) on sources of slow reading rate (and intact accuracy) as a selective deficit in reading, are now in preparation for publication.