The question of linguistic anomaly in developmental dyslexia

Recent research findings pointing to an anatomical anomaly in the left hemisphere of dyslexics supports the conjecture that dyslexia involves a central anomaly in structural linguistic capacity. Two preliminary studies were carried out to test this conjecture. One study employed the techniques of grammatical research and the other was a reaction time study. Each study provided distinct evidence of a linguistic anomaly. The grammatical study suggested an anomaly when the assignment of referential relations among nominal elements is restricted on the basis of sentence structure, and the reaction time study provided evidence of an anomaly in the exploitation of grammatical markers.