title: Impaired activation of the phonological lexicon: effects upon oral reading.
abstract: The role of the phonological lexicon in oral reading is examined in a patient with a small focal left hemisphere lesion. Impaired access to the patient's phonological lexicon is suggested by a number of findings, including the production of phonemic errors across a variety of tasks; increasing difficulty in word production with increasing word length; and difficulty on tests of homophone and rhyme judgments. Two competing models of reading are tested: the nonlexical ("rules") and the lexical ("no-rules") models. The rules model predicts that a disturbance in the phonological lexicon will result in surface alexia; the no-rules model predicts phonological alexia. Results indicate that the patient's reading is most similar to phonological alexia, providing support for the no-rules model. The applicability of the no-rules model to other forms of acquired alexia is explored.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Friedman
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Kohn
mesh_terms: D000849:Anomia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D001037:Aphasia / Q000523:psychology*; D001041:Aphasia, Wernicke / Q000523:psychology; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000523:psychology*; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000523:psychology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D004411:Dyslexia, Acquired / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D014825:Vocabulary