Reading in pure alexia

A Literature Review and New Data Supporting an Interactive Account of Letter-by-Letter Reading

“…On this right-hemisphere interpretation, the lesion in pure alexia prevents visual information from both cortices from accessing lexical and semantic representations in the left hemisphere, but this information can still support the (albeit limited) read ing capabilities of the right hemisphere. Consistent with the right-hem isphere view, Coslett et al (1993) showed that, as the LBL patients became able to engage in covert reading, explicit recognition perform ance was influenced by word imageability and grammatical class, properties often associated with the reading skills of the right hemisphere (Coltheart, 1980(Coltheart, , 1983.…”

“…Very few studies present the interaction between these different variables and word length (see Doctor, Sartori, & Saling, 1990, for an exception) so we do not consider the interactions in our tabulation, although we consider it to be crucial for our interactiv e view. Finally, some studies (for exam ple, Buxbaum & Coslett, 1996;Coslett & Monsul, 1994;Coslett & Saffran, 1989a;Coslett et al, 1993;Doctor et al, 1990;Friedman et al, 1993;Shallice & Saffran, 1986) assess the reading of other higherorder lexical, orthographic, or semantic variables, for exam ple a comparison of performance on suffixed/ pseudosuffixed words.…”

“…Farah and Wallace (1991) pointed this out in relation to the presence/ absence of the word superiority effect and the type of serial letter strategy used, whether "ends-in" or left-to-right. But perhaps the best illustration of the importance of considering strategy effects comes from patient JWC (Coslett et al, 1993), who appeared to be able to use two distinct strategies, only one of which produced covert reading. When JWC was instructed to name words, he employed a laborious, serial LBL strategy that ev entually resulted in explicit word identification.…”

“…The former, two-system account argues that the LBL reading and the word length effect are a consequence of the processing of the impaired left hemisphere, whereas covert reading and later lexical/ semantic effects are mediated by the right hemisphere (Coslett & Saffran, 1993;Saffran & Coslett, this issue). We have maintained instead that the empirical data and profiles of perform ance associated with LBL read ers do not require such a dichotomy.…”

Visuographemic Alexia: A New Form of a Peripheral Acquired Dyslexia

“…Practically all the cases of pure alexia published to date are LBL readers Patterson & Kay, 1982;ReuterLorenz & Brunn, 1990;Farah & Wallace, 1991;Kay & Hanley, 1991;Arguin & Bub, 1993). They preserve some capacity for reading words, be it explicitly or implicitly (Coslett, Saffran, Greenbaum, & Schwartz, 1993). In our case, such an ability is virtually impossible, but other visual tasks are strikingly intact, including a literal-decision task.…”