The results have revealed that the right brain is involved in the reading process for English and Hebrew, but not for Arabic.
The authors explained that in Arabic, identifying the number and location of dots that is critical in order to differentiate between letters, is a hard task for the right brain since that hemisphere primarily utilizes global information in order to identify letters.
The overall findings support the hypothesis that the complexity results in high perceptual load, contributing to the difficulty and slowness of processing in reading Arabic.
"This means that children acquiring languages other than Arabic draw on the use of both hemispheres in the first stages of learning to read, while children learning to read Arabic do not have the participation of the right brain. Hence, it may be the case that reading processes take longer to be automatized in Arabic. The native Arabic-speaking child is faced with more of a challenge, requiring more practice and particular pedagogic effort - which demonstrates the need for systematic professional involvement in the teaching of Arabic reading, especially for those who have learning difficulties," concluded the researchers.
The studies have been published in the prestigious journal Neuropsychology.
Source-ANI