ATTENTION FACTORS MEDIATING SYNTACTIC DEFICIENCY IN READING-DISABLED CHILDREN

Syntactic context effects on the identification of spoken words, and t he involvement of attention in mediating these effects, were examined in seventh-grade children with reading disabilities and children who w ere good readers. The subjects were asked to identify target words tha t were masked by white noise. All targets were final words embedded in unveiled sentences. Relative to a syntactically neutral context, the identification of targets whose morpho-syntactic structure was congrue nt with the context was facilitated and the identification of syntacti cally incongruent targets was inhibited. Reading-disabled children wer e less inhibited by syntactic incongruence than good readers. Presenti ng congruent and incongruent sentences in separate blocks reduced the amount of inhibition in good readers while having no effect on the rea ding-disabled. The percentage of correct identification of incongruent targets in the mixed presentation condition was larger for reading-di sabled than for good readers, whereas in the blocked presentation cond ition the percentage of correct identification was equal across groups . The amount of facilitation was not affected by blocking the congruen t and incongruent conditions, and was equal across reading groups. it is concluded that, in both reading groups, the syntactic structure of the context triggers a process of anticipation for particular syntacti c categories which is based on a basic assumption that linguistic mess ages are syntactically coherent Reading-disabled children are, however , less aware of this process and therefore less affected when the synt actic expectations are not fulfilled. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.