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

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An Erratum to this article was published on 20 September 2014

Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded partly by the Early Literacy in the Development of Early Language (ELDEL) European Initial Training Network; by an ANR Grant from the French Ministry of Research (Dynamics of Orthographic Processing, DyTO) and the CPER grant from Poitou–Charentes region. The authors would like to thank the schools for their contributions (Ecole Paul Bert in Poitiers, Ecole Paul Bert in Cognac, and Lycée Joseph Desfontaines in Melle, France), Elizabeth Portier for the English translation of the manuscript, and the University of Paris-Est Créteil for bearing the cost of the translation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CHArt Laboratory, University of Paris 8, Paris, France

    Denis Alamargot, Lisa Flouret & Virginie Pontart

  2. ESPE de l’Académie de Créteil, University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), Site de Bonneuil, rue Jean Macé, 94861, Bonneuil sur Marne Cedex, Paris, France

    Denis Alamargot & Pauline Morisset

  3. HEC Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Denis Larocque & Gilles Caporossi

  4. GERAD Laboratory, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Gilles Caporossi

  5. CeRCA-CNRS Laboratory, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

    Carmen Paduraru

  6. LAPSCO-CNRS Laboratory, Blaise Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Michel Fayol

Authors
  1. Denis Alamargot
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  2. Lisa Flouret
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  3. Denis Larocque
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  4. Gilles Caporossi
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  5. Virginie Pontart
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  6. Carmen Paduraru
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  7. Pauline Morisset
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  8. Michel Fayol
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denis Alamargot.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Table 2 Grade 3: performances on the digit span tests (backward and forward) and the “La pipe et le rat” reading test (raw and standard scores)
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Table 3 Grade 5: performances on the digit span tests (backward and forward) and the “La pipe et le rat” reading test (raw and standard scores)
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Table 4 Grade 12: performances on the digit span tests (backward and forward) and the “La pipe et le rat” reading test (raw and standard scores)
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Table 5 24 target items
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Table 6 24 foil items
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Alamargot, D., Flouret, L., Larocque, D. et al. Successful written subject–verb agreement: an online analysis of the procedure used by students in Grades 3, 5 and 12. Read Writ 28, 291–312 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9525-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9525-0

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