Article

Individuals with text-based neglect dyslexia omit words on the neglected side of
the sentence or text, usually on the left side. This study tested whether the
syntactic structure of the target sentence affects reading in this type of
neglect dyslexia. Because Hebrew is read from right to left,
it enables testing
whether the beginning of the sentence and its syntactic properties determine if
the final, leftmost, constituent is omitted or not. The participants were 7
Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired left text-based neglect dyslexia,
without syntactic impairments. Each participant read 310 sentences, in which we
compared 5 types of minimal pairs of sentences that differed in the
obligatoriness of the final (left) constituent. Complements were compared with
adjuncts, obligatory pronouns were compared with optional resumptive pronouns,
and the object of a past tense verb was compared with the object of a present
tense verb, which can also be taken to be an adjective, which does not require an
object. Questions that require a verb were compared with questions that can
appear without a verb, and clauses that serve as sentential complements of a verb
were compared with coordinated clauses, which are not required by the verb. In
addition, we compared the reading of noun sequences to the reading of meaningful
sentences, and assessed the neglect point in reading 2 texts. The results clearly
indicated that the syntactic knowledge of the readers with neglect dyslexia
modulated their sentence reading. They tended to keep on reading as long as the
syntactic and lexical-syntactic requirements of the sentence had not been met. In
4 of the conditions twice as many omissions occurred when the final constituent
was optional than when it was obligatory. Text reading was also guided by a
search for a "happy end" that does not violate syntactic or semantic
requirements. Thus, the syntactic structure of the target sentence modulates
reading and neglect errors in text-based neglect dyslexia, suggesting that the
best stimuli to diagnose mild text-based neglect dyslexia are sentences in which
the leftmost constituent is optional, and not required by syntax. Another finding
of this study is dissociation between neglect dyslexia at the text and at the
word levels. Two of the participants had neglect dyslexia at the text level,
manifested in omissions of words on the left side of text, without neglect dyslexia at the word level (namely, without omissions, substitutions, or
additions of letters on the left side of words).
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Langue : ANGLAIS