Disentangling Dyslexia by Maria Vender

Author:Maria Vender
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang AG

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Chapter 5

The Computation of Scalar Implicatures in Developmental Dyslexia

1. Introduction

In this chapter I will present and discuss the results of an experimental protocol that I performed to test how dyslexic children interpret sentences involving the computation of a scalar implicature. As we will observe in the first sections of this chapter, supporters of the Pragmatic Approach to the computation of implicatures have argued that drawing a scalar inference is a costly operation, very demanding in terms of processing resources. Assessing the computation of scalar implicatures in dyslexic children, therefore, can be useful to test the Phonological and Executive Working Memory Deficit Hypothesis, under the proposal that dyslexics’ difficulties are caused by a processing limitation hampering their performance in complex and demanding tasks.

In the experimental protocol that I will present in this chapter, dyslexics’ performance has been compared to that shown by age-matched typically developing children, younger preschool children and control adults. The protocol comprised five distinct experiments testing the interpretation of pragmatically infelicitous sentences with the quantifier some or the disjunction operator or (Exp. 1), the interpretation of the quantifiers some and most (Exp. 2) and of the frequency adverbs sometimes and often (Exp. 3) in contexts requiring the computation of scalar implicatures. The processing of disjunction has been further tested both in contexts involving the computation of the implicature and in downward entailing contexts, where scalar inferences do not arise (Exp. 4). Finally, a felicity judgment task has been administered to test the computation of the implicature generated by or with a different ← 173 | 174 → methodology aiming at decreasing the processing load of the task (Exp.5). In line with the predictions, results showed that dyslexic children are dramatically impaired in all tasks requiring the computation of scalar inferences, displaying a performance which is very similar to that exhibited by children three and five years younger than them. These data provide therefore strong evidence in favor of the Phonological and Executive Working Memory Deficit Hypothesis.

Before presenting the experimental protocol, I will briefly introduce the topic, explaining what scalar implicatures are and in which contexts they arise; I will also discuss the two main approaches developed to account for implicatures’ computation and argue that experimental data support the Pragmatic Approach, proposing that implicatures’ calculation is a costly operation.

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