The role of verb-transitivity preference in sentence processing by reading-disabled adolescents

The influence of verb-transitivity preference in sentence processing was investigated in two self-paced reading experiments with normal and reading disabled readers. Experiment 1 compared reading times of Learning Disabled (LD) adolescents diagnosed with reading disabilities with those of normal college students. Experiment 2 compared another group of LD adolescents with reading disabilities with age-matched normal readers. Preferred-transitive (e.g., visit) and preferred-intransitive (e.g., walked) verbs were inserted into transitive (e.g., The child visited/walked his dog) and intransitive (e.g., The child visited/walked with his friends) syntactic frames. The results from the normal control groups showed an interaction between verb preference and sentence type and a significant difference between verb preferences in transitive frames. The results from the LD groups showed only a significant difference between verb preference in the transitive contexts in Experiment 1 but no difference between verb types in Experiment 2. The pattern of results from the normal readers supports a version of the lexicalist approach in parsing. According to this approach, sentence parsing is primarily determined by the nature of verb-syntactic frames. The pattern of results from the LD groups suggests a tendency for a verb-syntactic deficit in reading disability.