School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Neuropsychologia. 2011 Aug;49(10):2803-16. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.023. Epub 2011 Jun 6.
Individuals with text-based neglect dyslexia omit words on the neglected side of the sentence or text, usually on the left side. This study tested whether the syntactic structure of the target sentence affects reading in this type of neglect dyslexia. Because Hebrew is read from right to left, it enables testing whether the beginning of the sentence and its syntactic properties determine if the final, leftmost, constituent is omitted or not. The participants were 7 Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired left text-based neglect dyslexia, without syntactic impairments. Each participant read 310 sentences, in which we compared 5 types of minimal pairs of sentences that differed in the obligatoriness of the final (left) constituent. Complements were compared with adjuncts, obligatory pronouns were compared with optional resumptive pronouns, and the object of a past tense verb was compared with the object of a present tense verb, which can also be taken to be an adjective, which does not require an object. Questions that require a verb were compared with questions that can appear without a verb, and clauses that serve as sentential complements of a verb were compared with coordinated clauses, which are not required by the verb. In addition, we compared the reading of noun sequences to the reading of meaningful sentences, and assessed the neglect point in reading 2 texts. The results clearly indicated that the syntactic knowledge of the readers with neglect dyslexia modulated their sentence reading. They tended to keep on reading as long as the syntactic and lexical-syntactic requirements of the sentence had not been met. In 4 of the conditions twice as many omissions occurred when the final constituent was optional than when it was obligatory. Text reading was also guided by a search for a "happy end" that does not violate syntactic or semantic requirements. Thus, the syntactic structure of the target sentence modulates reading and neglect errors in text-based neglect dyslexia, suggesting that the best stimuli to diagnose mild text-based neglect dyslexia are sentences in which the leftmost constituent is optional, and not required by syntax. Another finding of this study is dissociation between neglect dyslexia at the text and at the word levels. Two of the participants had neglect dyslexia at the text level, manifested in omissions of words on the left side of text, without neglect dyslexia at the word level (namely, without omissions, substitutions, or additions of letters on the left side of words).
具有基于文本的忽视性失读症的个体在句子或文本的被忽视侧省略单词，通常在左侧。本研究测试了目标句子的句法结构是否会影响这种类型的忽视性失读症的阅读。由于希伯来语是从右到左读的，因此可以测试句子的开头及其句法属性是否决定了最后、最左侧的成分是否被省略。参与者是 7 名患有后天性左侧基于文本的忽视性失读症的希伯来语使用者，没有句法障碍。每位参与者阅读了 310 个句子，在这些句子中，我们比较了 5 种最小对句子的类型，这些句子在最后（左侧）成分的强制性方面有所不同。补语与附加语进行比较，必须的代词与可选的回指代词进行比较，过去时态动词的宾语与现在时态动词的宾语进行比较，现在时态动词的宾语也可以是形容词，不需要宾语。需要动词的问题与可以没有动词出现的问题进行比较，作为动词的句子补语的子句与不是动词所必需的并列子句进行比较。此外，我们还比较了名词序列的阅读与有意义句子的阅读，并评估了阅读 2 个文本时的忽视点。结果清楚地表明，忽视性失读症患者的句法知识调节了他们的句子阅读。只要句子的句法和词汇句法要求没有得到满足，他们就会继续阅读。在 4 种条件下，当最后一个成分是可选的时，比当它是强制性的时，出现的省略次数增加了一倍。文本阅读也受到寻找不违反句法或语义要求的“幸福结局”的引导。因此，目标句子的句法结构调节了基于文本的忽视性失读症的阅读和忽视错误，这表明诊断轻度基于文本的忽视性失读症的最佳刺激是左侧成分是可选的句子，而不是语法要求的。本研究的另一个发现是文本和单词水平的忽视性失读症之间的分离。两名参与者在文本水平上存在忽视性失读症，表现为文本左侧的单词遗漏，而在单词水平上没有忽视性失读症（即，单词左侧没有字母遗漏、替代或添加）。
