Ricomprendo: an assessment test for fine-graded alterations of syntactic processing

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• The RiComprendo tool was developed to evaluate comprehension of diverse syntactic structures using a sentence-to-picture matching task.
• This study establishes normative data and examines demographic influences on syntactic comprehension.

Purpose of the Study:

• To set normative data for the RiComprendo tool.
• To investigate the impact of sentence type, age, and education on syntactic comprehension accuracy and response times.

Main Methods:

• Administered RiComprendo to 210 Italian native speakers using E-Prime.
• Collected accuracy and response time data.
• Employed generalized linear mixed models and Item Response Theory (IRT) for analysis.

Main Results:

• Normative data and a score computation spreadsheet are provided.
• Sentence type significantly affected accuracy and response times, with center-embedded object relatives showing the lowest accuracy.
• Higher education correlated with better accuracy; older age correlated with longer response times and slightly lower accuracy.

Conclusions:

• Syntactic complexity and demographic factors (age, education) influence sentence comprehension.
• RiComprendo facilitates the assessment of specific syntactic properties and their effects.
• The tool is valuable for research and clinical settings for assessing complex sentence comprehension and guiding interventions.