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Does the Visual Word Form Area Exist for a Non-Latin Script?

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Ahmet Cihan Uzun^1,4 (), Adem Yazıcı^2,4, Ausaf Ahmed Farooqui^1,2,4, Sami Boudelaa³; ¹Department of Neuroscience, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye, ²Department of Psychology, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye, ³Department of Linguistics, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, ⁴Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center (ASBAM) and National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye

A region specialized for recognizing visual word forms, Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), has been proposed in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC). Having been explored mostly in Latin scripts, its presence in non-Latin script users like Arabic remains unclear. Fifteen native Arabic and L2 English speakers were presented with Arabic words, English words, scrambled words, and line-drawn objects in separate blocks while they looked for consecutive image repetitions. A previously established VWFA parcel was set as a search space for subject-specific localization. Frequently enough, a contrast of Arabic words > Scrambled words (or Arabic words > Objects) did not delineate any reliable contiguous clusters (of ≥10 voxels) at a lenient threshold of uncorrected p<0.05. We therefore took top 10% of voxels from this parcel, irrespective of the statistical threshold, as the presumptive VWFA. These voxel sets showed evidence of reliability: They remained almost identical across two separate sessions of our experiment. Moreover, Arabic-selective and English-selective voxels were functionally separable. However, using the same criterion, we could also define a ‘scrambled word form area’ (Scrambled words > Arabic words & Objects). The identities of such voxels also did not change across sessions. In addition to subject-specific analyses, group GLM revealed massive bilateral deactivation along the VOTCs for Arabic word contrasts. However, the VWFA parcel was selectively spared from this deactivation. Overall, while the VWFA parcel might be sensitive to visual words in Arabic speakers, this sensitivity could not be reliably attributed exclusively to word form processing, even in small clusters.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Vision