Reading ability underlies the composite effect for Arabic words.

ABSTRACT: The composite effect, originally demonstrated for faces, has recently been shown to suggest holistic processing of words. The effect is associated with reading fluency in Latin script, but not in nonalphabetic Chinese script, suggesting that script properties influence its relationship with reading expertise. We measured the composite effect for Arabic, a visually complex alphabetic script that offers a useful contrast against Latin and Chinese. Arabic-English bilinguals (N= 24), and English-only readers (N= 22) completed a composite effect task, in which they judged whether the left or right halves of word pairs were the same or different. The unattended half was either congruent or incongruent with the judgement, and the halves were presented in aligned or misaligned blocks. The composit

SUBMITTER: Kouzy R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12614910 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature