Syntactic processing of Hebrew sentences in normal and dyslexic readers: Electrophysiological evidence

The authors examined differences in brain activity as measured by amplitude s and latencies of event-related potential (ERP) components in Hebrew-speak ing adult dyslexic and normal readers. The participants were measured while processing words' syntactic functions during reading of sentences with sub ject-verb-object syntactic order. The results suggested that among dyslexic and normal readers, N100 and P300 ERP components were sensitive to certain constituents of syntactic analysis for target words in accordance with the ir grammatical roles. The findings further demonstrated significant differe nces in ERP measures between dyslexic and normal readers. Compared with nor mal readers, dyslexic readers exhibited consistently higher amplitudes and longer latencies in both ERP components for the subject of the sentence. Si gnificant though less consistent, ERP variations were observed for other se ntence elements. In addition, dyslexic readers differed from normal readers in their processing strategies. For normal readers, the verb-oriented, mor phologically based strategy was found to be the most efficient for sentence processing in Hebrew, whereas the dyslexic readers demonstrated a more pri mitive mode of identification of words' grammatical roles, namely, the word -order strategy. The results support the hypothesis that there is a syntact ic processing "weakness" in dyslexics.