Sensitivity to subject-verb agreement in spoken language in children with developmental dyslexia

The principle aim of this paper was to investigate sensitivity to subject-verb agreement morphology in children with developmental dyslexia. An auditory grammaticality judgement task was used to compare morphosyntactic abilities of primary school dyslexic children relative to normally developing children matched on chronological age and children matched on reading level. The dyslexic children performed significantly worse than both control groups. The findings of this study contribute to other evidence that morphosyntactic skills may be compromised in developmental dyslexia. Specifically, subject-verb agreement morphology may be affected in dyslexic 8year-old children in such a way that it cannot be the consequence of a delay in reading ability.