title: Understanding the mental lexicon through neglect dyslexia: a study on compound noun reading.
abstract: The present study employs neglect dyslexia (ND) as an experimental model to study compound-word processing; in particular, it investigates whether compound constituents are hierarchically organized at mental level and addresses the possibility of whole-word representation. Seven Italian-speaking patients suffering from ND participated in a word naming task. Both left-headed (pescespada, swordfish) and right-headed (astronave, spaceship) Italian compound nouns were used as stimuli. Non-existent compounds, which were generated by substituting the leftmost constituent of a compound with an orthographically similar word (e.g., *pestespada, *plaguesword), were also employed. A significant headedness effect emerged in the group analysis: patients read left-headed compounds better than right-headed compounds. A significant lexicality effect was also found: the participants read real compounds better than their non-existent compound pairs. Moreover, logit mixed-effects analyses indicated a left-hand constituent frequency effect. Results are discussed in terms of hierarchical representation of compounds and direct access to compound lemma nodes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy. m.marelli1@campus.unimib.it
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marelli
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aggujaro
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Molteni
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Luzzatti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000150:complications*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology