This study addresses the issue of the existence of whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic and multisyllabic words in the Chinese mental lexicon. A Cantonese brain-injured dyslexic individual with semantic deficits, YKM, was assessed on his abilities to read aloud and to comprehend disyllabic words containing homographic heterophonous characters, the pronunciation of which can only be disambiguated in word context. Superior performance on reading to comprehension was found. YKM could produce the target phonological forms without understanding the words. The dissociation is taken as evidence for whole-word representations for these words at the phonological level. The claim is consistent with previous account for discrepancy of the frequencies of tonal errors between reading aloud and object naming in Cantonese reported of another case study of similar deficits. Theoretical arguments for whole-word form representations for all multisyllabic Chinese words are also discussed.

Sam-Po Law

Winsy Wong

Karen M. Y. Chiu

Whole-Word Phonological Representations of Disyllabic Words in the Chinese Lexicon: Data From Acquired Dyslexia

Understanding how the mappings between orthography and phonology in alphabetic languages are learned, represented and processed has been enhanced by the cognitive neuropsychological investigation of patients with acquired reading and writing disorders. During the past decade, this methodology has been extended to understanding reading and writing in Chinese leading to new insights about language processing, dyslexia and dysgraphia. The aim of this paper is to review reports of patients who have acquired dyslexia and acquired dysgraphia in Chinese and describe the functional architecture of the reading and writing system. Our conclusion is that the unique features of Chinese script will determine the symptoms of acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia in Chinese.

Wengang Yin

Shengxi He

Brendan Stuart Weekes

Acquired Dyslexia and Dysgraphia in Chinese

Does letter-form constrain errors in peripheral dyslexia? In Hebrew, 5 of the 22 letters have two different letter forms, one is used only when the letter occurs in word-final position, the other form is used in initial and middle positions. Is the information on final-forms encoded in the letter identity information and used for word identification, or is it discarded? The current research explored this question through the effect of final vs. non final letter form on the error pattern in neglect dyslexia (neglexia) and letter position dyslexia (LPD). Left word-based neglexia results in errors of omission, substitution and addition of letters in the left side of words, which in Hebrew is the end of the word. We examined whether final letter form blocks the addition of letters to the end of the word and whether omissions of letters after letters in non-final form are avoided. The predominant error type in LPD is migration of letters within words. We tested whether migrations also occur when they cause form change of either final-form letters that move to middle position or middle-form letters that move to final position. These questions were assessed in both acquired and developmental neglexia and LPD. The results indicated a strong effect of final letter-form on acquired neglexia and on acquired and developmental LPD, which almost completely prevented form-changing errors. This effect was not found in developmental neglexia, where words that end in final-form letters were actually more impaired than other words, probably because final-form letters appear only on the neglected side of the word for Hebrew-reading children with left developmental neglexia. These data show that early visuo-orthographic analysis is sensitive to final letter form and that final letter form constrains errors in peripheral dyslexia.

Naama Friedmann

Aviah Gvion

Letter Form as a Constraint for Errors in Neglect Dyslexia and Letter Position Dyslexia

In this paper, we report a detailed analysis of the impaired performance of a dysgraphic individual, AD, who produced similar rates of letter-level errors in written spelling, oral spelling, and typing. We found that the distribution of various letter error types displayed a distinct pattern in written spelling on the one hand and in oral spelling and typing on the other. In particular, noncontextual letter substitution errors (i.e., errors in which the erroneous letter that replaces the target letter does not occur elsewhere within the word) were virtually absent in oral spelling and typing and mainly found in written spelling. In contrast, letter deletion errors and multiple-letter errors were typically found in oral spelling and very exceptional in written spelling. Only contextual letter substitution errors (i.e., errors in which the erroneous letter that replaces the target letter is identical to a letter occurring earlier or later in the word) were found in similar proportions in the three tasks. We argue that these contrasting patterns of letter error distribution result from damage to two distinct levels of letter representation and processing within the spelling system, namely, the amodal graphemic representation held in the graphemic buffer and the letter form representation computed by subsequent writing-specific processes. Then, we examined the relationship between error and target in the letter substitution errors produced in written and oral spelling and found evidence that distinct types of letter representation are processed at each of the hypothetized levels of damage: symbolic letter representation at the graphemic level and representation of the component graphic strokes at the letter form processing level.

Marie-Pierre de Partz

Aliette Lochy

Agnesa Pillon

Multiple Levels of Letter Representation in Written Spelling: Evidence From a Single Case of Dysgraphia with Multiple Deficits

The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently reported for normal readers, in a German-speaking dyslexic patient. The reading impairment was characterized as a severe deficit in naming single letters or words in the presence of spared lexical processing of visual word forms. Three visual lexical decision experiments were conducted with the dyslexic patient, an unimpaired control person matched to the patient and a control group: Experiment 1 manipulated the frequency of words and word-initial syllables and demonstrated systematic effects of both factors in normal readers and in the dyslexic patient. The syllable frequency effect was replicated in a second experiment with a more strictly controlled stimulus set. Experiment 3 confirmed the patient&#x2019;s deficit in activating phonological forms from written words by demonstrating that a pseudohomophone effect as observed in the unimpaired control participants was absent in the dyslexic patient.

Prisca Stenneken

Markus Conrad

Florian Hutzler

Mario Braun

Arthur M. Jacobs

Frequency Effects with Visual Words and Syllables in a Dyslexic Reader

Readers and writers of Spanish use an orthography that is highly transparent. It has been proposed that readers of Spanish can rely on grapheme-phoneme correspondences, alone, to access meaning or phonology from print. In recent years, a number of case studies have yielded evidence inconsistent with this idea. We review these studies with particular focus on those that report evidence for reading based on direct lexical mappings between print, orthographic representations, and meaning or phonology. We report a new case of acquired literacy impairment in Spanish, MJ, who presents a pattern of preserved abilities and deficits symptomatic of deep dyslexia. The patient is unable to read nonwords, but can read a substantial number of words. Her reading is characterized by the production of semantic, visual, and derivational errors. We argue that MJ has a deficit in her lexical selection ability, common to both her reading and her naming problems. We propose that MJ, and the other cases we review, demonstrate that lexical reading is adopted by skilled readers even in a transparent language.

Robert Davies

Fernando Cuetos

Acquired Dyslexia in Spanish: A Review and Some Observations on a New Case of Deep Dyslexia

Objective: It has been hypothesized that monoclonal antibody D8/17 identifies a B lymphocyte antigen with expanded expression in patients with rheumatic fever, childhood onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette syndrome (TS) or prepubertal anorexia nervosa (AN). Our purpose was to replicate these studies in a Spanish population and to determine whether D8/17 identifies a subgroup of these patients, focusing especially on OCD subjects.Method: D8/17 expression was assessed with double immunofluorescence and flow cytometry using monoclonal immunoglobulin M (IgM) in three groups of patients with diagnoses of OCD (n = 17), TS (n = 5) and prepubertal AN (n = 5), recruited during 2001.Results: In the sample studied the average percentage of B cells expressing D8/17 was 4.8&#x25;. The D8/17 positive proportion of B lymphocytes was above 11&#x25; in only two out of 17 OCD patients (7.4&#x25; of total sample) and in none of the TS or prepubertal AN patients. No statistically significant differences were found in mean percentages of D8/17 between the three groups.Conclusions: In the sample studied the expression of D8/17 in B cells was very low and the great majority of patients were negative for the D8/17 marker. The molecular characterization of D8/17 would be a major step forward in clarifying its implication for these diseases.

Astrid Morer

Odette Vi&#xf1;as

Luisa L&#xe1;zaro

Jordi Bosch

Josep Toro

Josefina Castro

D8/17 Monoclonal Antibody: An Unclear Neuropsychiatric Marker

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Behavioural Neurology - Table of contents 2005

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Behavioural Neurology provides a platform for researchers and clinicians working in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, and neuropsychiatry.

Behavioural Neurology