Successful written subject–verb agreement: an online analysis of the procedure used by students in Grades 3, 5 and 12

• Published in: Reading & writing Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 291 - 312
• Main Authors: Alamargot, Denis, Flouret, Lisa, Larocque, Denis, Caporossi, Gilles, Pontart, Virginie, Paduraru, Carmen, Morisset, Pauline, Fayol, Michel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2015; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; Kluwer Academic Publishers [1989-2004] - Springer [2005-....]
• Subjects: Age Differences; Agreement; Cognitive science; Education; Elementary education; Elementary School Students; Elementary Schools; English language; Errors; Eye Movements; Grade 12; Grade 3; Grade 5; Grammar; Grammatical agreement; Grammatical number; Grammatical subject; Humanities and Social Sciences; Inflection (Morphology); Laboratories; Language and Literature; Linguistics; Literacy; Neurology; Nouns; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Secondary School Students; Semantics; Sentences; Short Term Memory; Social Sciences; Studies; Subject; Verbs; Writing; Writing Processes; Written Language; France; Canada; Montreal Quebec Canada; Written production; Subject–verb agreement; Attraction errors; Online analysis; Eye movements
• ISSN: 0922-4777; 1573-0905
• DOI: 10.1007/s11145-014-9525-0

This study was designed to (1) investigate the procedure responsible for successful written subject–verb agreement, and (2) describe how it develops across grades. Students in Grades 3, 5 and 12 were asked to read noun–noun–verb sentences aloud (e.g., Le chien des voisins mange [ The dog of the neighbors eats ]) and write out the verb inflections. Some of the nouns differed in number, thus inducing attraction errors. Results showed that third graders were successful because they implemented a declarative procedure requiring regressive fixations on the subject noun while writing out the inflection. A dual-step procedure (Hupet, Schelstraete, Demaeght, & Fayol, 1996 ) emerged in Grade 5, and was fully efficient by Grade 12. This procedure, which couples an automatized agreement rule with a monitoring process operated within working memory (without the need for regressive fixations), was found to trigger a mismatch asymmetry (singular–plural > plural–singular) in Grade 5. The time course of written subject–verb agreement, the origin of agreement errors and differences between the spoken and written modalities are discussed.