The influence of perceptual load on the orthographic complexity of Arabic words processing: ERP Evidence

Abstract

The current study manipulated according to perceptual load theory (PLT) by increasing the letters' numbers of Arabic words and pseudowords to examine the effect of selective attention on the orthographic complexity of Arabic words. The current study’s objective is to investigate the effect of selective attention on Event-Related Potentials components associated with orthographic codes such as N170. Participants were requested to perform lexical decision task by identifying words vs. pseudowords. Results showed that there is a significant effect of selective attention on N170 component, which reflects orthographic coding of words with increase negatively for three-letters words compared to six-letters words or nine-letters words. Interestingly, Selective attention does not affect the pseudowords, in that there are no differences between different pseudowords according to length. These findings suggested that selective attention influenced both words and pseudo-words. These findings showed that orthographic coding stages strongly depend on selective attention.