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SUMMARY:Timing in dyslexia: Language\, reading and writing - Professor Mar
 ia Teresa Guasti (University of Milano-Bicocca)
DTSTART:20181115T170000Z
DTEND:20181115T183000Z
UID:TALK114001@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Yixin Zhang
DESCRIPTION:Languages have a rhythmic structure\, have (morpho)syntax and 
 the two are somehow related. Why? In this paper\, we attempt to provide an
  answer to this question based on experimental evidence from language impa
 ired individuals and controls. Briefly\, our answer is that rhythm and syn
 tax allow humans to generate predictions concerning the incoming input. In
  turn\, this ability reduces memory load through the pre-activation of the
  sensory system and allows one to anticipate abstract representations.\n\n
 In Pagliarini et al. (2015)\, we showed that children with Developmental D
 yslexia (DD) fail to comply with two rhythmic principles of the handwritin
 g: (1) The principle of isochrony (Binet & Courtier\, 1893\; Stetson & McD
 ill\, 1923\; Viviani & Terzuolo\, 1982) which states “that the speed of 
 movement execution is proportionally related to the length of its trajecto
 ry in order to keep the movement duration approximately constant” and (2
 ) “The principle of homothety (Lashley\, 1951\; Viviani & Terzuolo\, 198
 2)\, which guarantees the invariance of the relative duration of a movemen
 t’s components under a number of possible variations in the duration of 
 the very same movement. While typically developing (TD) children were able
  to maintain the same global and relative duration constant across conditi
 ons\, children with DD varied\,as shown in figure 1.\n\nWe also found that
  the ability to satisfy the two rhythmic principles of handwriting is corr
 elated with reading measures\, non-word repetition. In Pagliarini et al. (
 2017)\, we showed that TD children from grade 1 are able to comply with th
 e two rhythmic principles of handwriting. This suggests that their acquisi
 tion does not require a lot of training. This fact also allow us to discar
 d the hypothesis that the weakness of children with DD is not due to lack 
 of practice\, as younger children with little practice have no problem. Th
 e two studies together suggest that children with DD have problems with th
 e temporal organization of events\, with rhythm. Rhythm is useful to predi
 ct future events. Then\, we expect that children and adults with DD have p
 roblems in anticipating future events. To test this hypothesis\, we carrie
 d out an experimentwith 18 adults with DD along with 20 controls. We engag
 ed  participants in a task requiring entrainment to a given rhythm and tap
 ping in synchrony with a beat. We found a significant group difference in 
 the predictable condition. Controls were synchronous or anticipate the bea
 t\, whereas participants with DD display a tendency of tapping after the o
 ccurrence of the beat. In the unpredictable condition\, Group was not sign
 ificant\, as participants from both groups responded in response to the be
 at (i.e. reaction time). Interestingly\, participants with good predictive
  skills were also faster in reading. These results are in line with anothe
 r finding from the literature provided by Huetting & Brouwer (2015). These
  authors engaged adults Dutch individuals with DD in an eye-tracking exper
 iment measuring whether they were able to predict an object based on morph
 osyntactic features of the article. Shorter latency were observed in contr
 ols than in adults with DD. Persici & Arosio (in prep) replicated this fin
 ding with Italian children with DD. In conclusion\, languages display a rh
 ythmic structure that allows individuals to predict incoming linguistic ev
 ents\; similar\, morphosyntactic features are used to anticipate the incom
 ing structure and generate an abstract representation used to accommodate 
 the input. Individuals with DD have problems in predicting or in extractin
 g regularities.\n
LOCATION:GR06/07\, Faculty of English\, 9 West Rd (Sidgwick Site)
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