SENTENCE COMPREHENSION LIMITATIONS RELATED TO SYNTACTIC DEFICITS IN READING DISABLED CHILDREN.
Item
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Title
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SENTENCE COMPREHENSION LIMITATIONS RELATED TO SYNTACTIC DEFICITS IN READING DISABLED CHILDREN.
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Identifier
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AAI8319803
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identifier
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8319803
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Creator
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STEIN, CECILE LYNNE.
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Contributor
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Prof. Edgar B. Zurif
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
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Abstract
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This study was based on the premise that underlying reading disabilities is a language disorder. Twenty reading disabled subjects (ten seven/eight year olds and ten nine/ten year olds) were compared with twenty average readers of the same age levels.;A sentence comprehension task was presented utilizing simple and multiple clause constructions with unspecified subjects. Sentences were equated for length. Based on the premise that child language is constrained by linguistic universals, subjects were classified according to grammatical orientation and evidence of a linguistic universal, the C-Command Constraint on Control. Error patterns were recorded.;Two metalinguistic tasks were administered: a synonomy and a well-formedness judgment task. A conservation task was also presented. Experimental and control groups were compared, and a linear correlation coefficient between the well-formedness and conservation tasks was obtained. All language tasks were administered in oral and written form.;Predictions were made that: scores for the comprehension task would be similar regardless of modality, and reading disabled subjects would evince less mature levels of grammatical orientation and lower C-Command scores. It was also predicted that reading disabled subjects would perform more poorly on the metalinguistic and conservation tasks.;The results indicated that reading disabled subjects performed more poorly on the language tasks than did the controls. Scores on the sentence comprehension task were similar regardless of modality. Reading disabled subjects evinced less mature levels of grammatical orientation and variability regarding evidence of C-Command. Performance on the conservation task was poorer for the younger reading disabled group only. A correlation was found to exist between well-formedness and conservation scores for the older reading impaired and younger control groups only.;The main conclusions reached were that the reading disabled groups demonstrated a language delay as well as a difference. This was demonstrated by their less mature levels of grammatical orientation and variability regarding evidence of C-Command. In addition, various error patterns observed in the interpretation of certain relative clause constructions and in the well-formedness judgment task suggested a different pattern.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Speech and Hearing Sciences
