Reading Direction and Sentence Interpretation in Urdu–English Bilingual Readers

Abstract

Background: Reading direction is a fundamental characteristic of written language that influences visual attention, eye movement patterns, and cognitive processing during reading. Bilingual individuals who routinely read languages with opposite writing directions, such as Urdu (right-to-left) and English (left-to-right), provide a unique opportunity to investigate how script orientation affects sentence interpretation. Despite increasing interest in bilingual language processing, limited research has examined the influence of reading direction on comprehension and interpretation among Urdu–English bilingual readers.

Objective: To examine the effect of reading direction on sentence interpretation and reading performance among Urdu–English bilingual adults.

Methodology: A cross-sectional experimental study was conducted among 80 Urdu–English bilingual university students aged 18–30 years. Participants completed standardized sentence comprehension tasks presented in Urdu and English under controlled conditions. Reading time, comprehension accuracy, and response latency were recorded. Data were analyzed using paired-sample t-tests, repeated-measures ANOVA, and Pearson's correlation, with statistical significance set at p < 0.05.

Results: Participants demonstrated significantly faster reading speed in their dominant language while maintaining high comprehension accuracy in both languages. Response latency differed significantly between left-to-right and right-to-left sentence presentation, indicating that reading direction influenced sentence processing efficiency. Strong positive correlations were observed between language proficiency and comprehension accuracy in both reading directions.

Conclusion: Reading direction significantly influences sentence interpretation among Urdu–English bilingual readers. The findings suggest that bilingual readers flexibly adapt cognitive strategies according to script orientation, highlighting the interaction between orthographic systems and language processing. These findings have implications for bilingual education, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience.