The Orthographic Ambiguity of the Arabic Graphic System: Evidence from a Case of Central Agraphia Affecting the Two Routes of Spelling

Table 3

Performance of CHS and control participants (mean and S.D.) on writing to dictation and written picture naming tasks.

Spelling tasks	CHS	Controls	Modified -test/chi^2
Writing to dictation
Letters and syllables
Letters (28)	23 (82.14%)	28 (00)	;
Syllables with long vowels (30)		30 (00)	;
Syllables without long vowels (30)		30 (00)	;
Words
Low-frequency words (20)		20 (0)	;
High-frequency words (20)		20 (0)	;
Low-imageability words (30)		29.8 (.4)	;
High-imageability words (30)		30 (0)	;
Closed-class words (20)		20 (0)	;
Open-class (20)		20 (0)	;
Nonwords (19)	3 (16%)	19 (0)	;
Oral vs. written spelling of words
Oral spelling (72)		71.66 (.57)	;
Written spelling (72)		72 (0)	;
Written picture naming
Object pictures (55)		53.2 (1.09)	;

. Note: the database Aralex [22] was used to control word frequency. There exists no data for the degree of the imageability of Arabic words. Therefore, 19 participants (mean age: 37.7 years; age range: 21-52 years; education level: <12) were asked to rate the words for imageability (i.e., their ability to evoke mental imagery) on a 7-point Likert scale (; ). The words that participants scored 1-3 were considered low-imageability words, while those scored 5-7 were considered high-imageability words. The mean rating was 2.51 () for low-imageability words and 5.95 (SD =1.13) for high-imageability words, and the difference between the two types of word was significant (, ).