In an event-related potentials (ERPs) study, we examined the comprehension of different types of Chinese (Mandarin) relative clauses (object vs. subject-extracted) to test the universality and language specificity of sentence comprehension processes. Because Chinese lacks morphosyntactic cues to sentence constituent relations, it allows a test of…

Verbal descriptions of actions activate compatible motor responses [Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002). Grounding language in action. "Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9", 558-565]. Previous studies have found that the motor processes for manual rotation are engaged in a direction-specific manner when a verb disambiguates the direction of…

Listening and reading comprehension of paragraph-length material are considered higher-order language skills fundamental to social and academic functioning. Using ecologically relevant language stimuli that were matched for difficulty according to developmental level, we analyze the effects of task, age, neuropsychological skills, and post-task…

Children with Syntactic Specific Language Impairment (S-SLI) have difficulties understanding object relative clauses, which have been ascribed to a deficit in syntactic movement. The current study explores the nature of the deficit in movement, and specifically whether it is related to a deficit in the construction of syntactic structure and…