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Assessing Dyslexia at Six Year of Age
Published on: May 1, 2020
Sentence production in students with dyslexia
Lori J P Altmann1, Linda J Lombardino, Cynthia Puranik
1Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7420, USA. laltmann@ufl.edu
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
|September 14, 2007
Summary
Children with dyslexia struggle with sentence production, particularly using irregular past participles. These difficulties in grammar and sentence formulation may persist into adulthood.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Spoken language deficits are known in developmental dyslexia.
- Sentence production proficiency in dyslexic children is under-researched.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate syntactic production in individuals with dyslexia.
- To compare sentence production in dyslexic and typically developing individuals.
- To analyze the use of theme-experiencer verbs and irregular past participles.
Main Methods:
- Participants aged 8–22 years produced sentences with specific verb types.
- Targeted verb categories included control verbs, theme-experiencer verbs, and irregular past participles.
- Sentence production was analyzed for fluency, grammaticality, and completeness.
Main Results:
- Dyslexic individuals produced more dysfluent, ungrammatical, and incomplete sentences.
- Individuals with dyslexia showed particular impairment with irregular past participles.
- Developmental trajectories of verb usage differed between groups.
Conclusions:
- Grammar development is linked to lexical knowledge acquisition.
- Sentence formulation difficulties in dyslexia may extend into adulthood.
- The findings support a model of lexical representation influencing grammatical development.
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