Integrating Linguistic and Eye Movements Features for Arabic Text Readability Assessment Using ML and DL Models

Evaluating text readability is crucial for supporting both language learners and native readers in selecting appropriate materials. Cognitive psychology research, leveraging behavioral data such as eye-tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, has demonstrated effectiveness in identifying cognitive activities associated with text difficulty during reading. However, the distinctive linguistic characteristics of Arabic present unique challenges for applying such data in readability assessments. While behavioral signals have been explored for this purpose, their potential for Arabic remains underutilized. This study aims to advance Arabic readability assessments by integrating eye-tracking features into computational models. It presents a series of experiments that utilize both text-based and gaze-based features within machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) frameworks. The gaze-based features were extracted from the AraEyebility corpus, which contains eye-tracking data collected from 15 native Arabic speakers. The experimental results show that ensemble ML models, particularly AdaBoost with linguistic and eye-tracking handcrafted features, outperform ML models using TF-IDF and DL models employing word embedding vectorization. Among the DL models, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieved the best performance with combined linguistic and eye-tracking features. These findings underscore the value of cognitive data and emphasize the need for exploration to fully realize its potential in Arabic readability assessment.