Stella Marianna, Engelhardt Paul E
School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Suffolk, Ipswich IP4 1QJ, UK.
School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Brain Sci. 2022 Feb 1;12(2):209. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12020209.
This study examined the comprehension of passive sentences in order to investigate whether individuals with dyslexia rely on parsing heuristics in language comprehension to a greater extent than non-dyslexic readers. One hundred adults (50 dyslexics and 50 controls) read active and passive sentences, and we also manipulated semantic plausibility. Eye movements were monitored, while participants read each sentence, and afterwards, participants answered a comprehension question. We also assessed verbal intelligence and working memory in all participants. Results showed dyslexia status interacted with sentence structure and plausibility, such that participants with dyslexia showed significantly more comprehension errors with passive and implausible sentence. With respect to verbal intelligence and working memory, we found that individuals with lower verbal intelligence were overall more likely to make comprehension errors, and individuals with lower working memory showed particular difficulties with passive and implausible sentences. For reading times, we found that individuals with dyslexia were overall slower readers. These findings suggest that (1) individuals with dyslexia do rely on heuristics to a greater extent than do non-dyslexic individuals, and (2) individual differences variables (e.g., verbal intelligence and working memory) are also related to the use of parsing heuristics. For the latter, lower ability individuals tended to be more consistent with heuristic processing (i.e., good-enough representations).
本研究考察了被动句的理解情况，以探究诵读困难个体在语言理解中是否比非诵读困难读者更依赖句法分析启发式策略。一百名成年人（50名诵读困难者和50名对照组）阅读主动句和被动句，我们还对语义合理性进行了操控。在参与者阅读每个句子时监测他们的眼动，之后，参与者回答一个理解问题。我们还评估了所有参与者的语言智力和工作记忆。结果显示，诵读困难状况与句子结构和合理性存在交互作用，即诵读困难参与者在被动句和不合理句子上出现的理解错误显著更多。关于语言智力和工作记忆，我们发现语言智力较低的个体总体上更易出现理解错误，工作记忆较低的个体在被动句和不合理句子上表现出特别的困难。在阅读时间方面，我们发现诵读困难个体总体上阅读速度较慢。这些发现表明：（1）诵读困难个体比非诵读困难个体在更大程度上依赖启发式策略；（2）个体差异变量（如语言智力和工作记忆）也与句法分析启发式策略的运用有关。对于后者，能力较低的个体往往更符合启发式加工（即足够好的表征）。
