Dissociation between word reading and word copying in a patient with left visual neglect.
A patient with left visual neglect following a right hemisphere infarction is described. When presented with isolated words and nonwords, she made left neglect errors in reading aloud, but not in direct copying. This finding suggests a distinction between two ways of processing orthographic stimuli: depending on the task, the unit of processing can be the letter string or the single letter. In reading, the letter string is treated as a whole while in copying it is processed element-by-element. Left neglect differentially affects the processing of single words: in reading errors involve the left, initial letters, while in copying they involve the single letters, or the left part of the letters, independently of their position within the stimulus.
Cubelli
R
R
Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Padova. cubelli@psico.unipd.it
Simoncini
L
L
D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011932:Reading; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*