Biomedical subjects

Salim Abu-Rabia

Publications and source records attributed to Salim Abu-Rabia.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

The role of morphology and short vowelization in reading Arabic among normal and dyslexic readers in grades 3, 6, 9, and 12.

This study was an investigation of several Arabic reading measures among dyslexics and normal Arabic readers across different ages (grades 3, 6, 9, and 12): the role of morphology, short vowelization (phonological and syntactic skills), spelling, reading isolated words, and reading comprehension. The results of the one-way ANOVAs indicated clear differences between the dyslexic readers and the normal readers on all reading measures. However, the stepwise regression analysis revealed consistent orthographic results: morphology (identification and/or production) and spelling were generally the most powerful predictors of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension among dyslexic and normal readers across these different age groups. The results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of the Arabic orthography and the heavy reliance of readers at all levels and ages on orthographic factors in reading.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Phonological errors predominate in Arabic spelling across grades 1-9.

Most of the spelling error analysis has been conducted in Latin orthographies and rarely conducted in other orthographies like Arabic. Two hundred and eighty-eight students in grades 1-9 participated in the study. They were presented nine lists of words to test their spelling skills. Their spelling errors were analyzed by error categories. The most frequent errors were phonological. The results did not indicate any significant differences in the percentages of phonological errors across grades one to nine.Thus, phonology probably presents the greatest challenge to students developing spelling skills in Arabic.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The effect of consanguineous marriage on reading disability in the Arab community.

The present study examined the effect of consanguineous marriage in the Arab community on reading disabilities of offspring. It examined whether the rate of reading disabilities was higher among offspring of first-cousin parents than offspring of unrelated parents; and whether reading-disabled children of first-cousin parents were more disabled in phonological awareness and phonological decoding than reading-disabled children of unrelated parents and normally reading younger children. These questions were investigated among 814 pupils of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, using word recognition and reading comprehension tests. Two experimental groups were chosen from this population. These were a reading-disabled group of 22 pupils who were children of first-cousin marriages and 21 pupils who were children of unrelated parents. A control group was also selected, consisting of 21 younger normally reading pupils at the same reading level. All the groups were tested on non-words, real words, phonological, orthographic and working memory measures. The results indicated that the rate of reading disabilities among children of first-cousin parents was higher than that of with children of second-cousin parents, distantly related parents, or unrelated parents. Further, no differences were found in phonological awareness and decoding between the two reading-disabled groups. Moreover, the results indicate a significant advantage of the younger normal readers over the reading-disabled children in the measures of phonological awareness, decoding, and orthographical knowledge that requires spelling. However, in reading common words and choosing words in context, the performance of the reading-disabled groups and the normally reading group were similar. It has been suggested that further research is needed to evaluate the role of intelligence, nevertheless our results provide new evidence for a genetic basis to reading disabilities.

Arabs↗

PubMed2002

Reading, syntactic, orthographic, and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic-English speaking Canadian children.

This study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 56 bilingual Arab-Canadian children age's 9-14. English was their main instructional language, and Arabic was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program in Toronto where they were taught to read and write Arabic. The children were administered word and pseudo-word reading, language, and working memory tests in English and Arabic. The majority of the children showed at least adequate proficiency in both languages. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo-word reading working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The poor readers in Arabic had lower scores on all linguistic tasks, except the visual task. There were no significant differences between bilingual English Arabic children and monolingual English-speaking children on the reading, language, and memory tasks. However, bilingual English Arabic children who had reading problems in English had higher scores on English pseudo-word reading and spelling tasks than monolingual English-speaking children with reading disabilities, probably because of positive transfer from the regular nature of Arabic orthography. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of language reading skills in both languages--Arabic and English--despite the different nature of the two orthographies.

Adolescent↗