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Does argument structure complexity affect reading? A case study of an Italian agrammatic patient with deep dyslexia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2013

ELENA BARBIERI ,
SILVIA AGGUJARO ,
FRANCO MOLTENI  and
CLAUDIO LUZZATTI
ELENA BARBIERI*
Affiliation:
University of Milano-Bicocca
SILVIA AGGUJARO
Affiliation:
Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Unit, Ospedale Valduce
FRANCO MOLTENI
Affiliation:
Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Unit, Ospedale Valduce
CLAUDIO LUZZATTI
Affiliation:
University of Milano-Bicocca
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Elena Barbieri, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1 20126 Milano, Italy. E-mail: elena.barbieri83@gmail.com
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Abstract

The argument structure complexity hypothesis (Thompson, 2003) was introduced to account for the verb production pattern of agrammatic patients, who show greater difficulty in producing transitive versus unergative verbs (argument number effect) and in producing unaccusative versus unergative verbs (syntactic movement effect). The present study investigates these two effects in the reading performance of a patient (GR) suffering from deep dyslexia. GR read nouns significantly better than verbs; moreover, her performance was better on unergative than on transitive verbs, whereas the comparison between unergative and unaccusative verbs did not differ significantly. Data support the extension of the argument structure complexity hypothesis to word naming and suggest that the two aspects of argument structure complexity occur at different levels within models of lexical processing.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 533 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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