title: The nature and treatment of phonological text agraphia.
abstract: Phonological alexia and agraphia are written language disorders characterised by disproportionate difficulty reading and spelling nonwords in comparison to real words. In phonological alexia, it has been shown that, despite relatively accurate reading of words in isolation, text-level reading deficits are often marked and persistent. Specifically, some individuals demonstrate difficulty reading functors and affixes in sentences, a profile referred to as phonological text alexia. In this paper, we demonstrate an analogous manifestation of the phonological impairment on text-level writing and suggest the term "phonological text agraphia". We examined four individuals with phonological alexia/agraphia who also showed disproportionate difficulty writing well-formed sentences in comparison to their grammatical competence in spoken utterances. Implementation of a phonological treatment protocol resulted in significantly improved sublexical phonology skills as well as improvements in grammatical accuracy of written narratives. These findings support the notion of a common phonological impairment underlying nonword reading/spelling deficits and sentence-level difficulties.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.|b Department of Neurology , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.
authors.forename: Pélagie M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Beeson
authors.affiliation: a Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.
authors.forename: Kindle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rising
authors.affiliation: a Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.
authors.forename: Andrew T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: DeMarco
authors.affiliation: a Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.
authors.forename: Taylor Howard
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Foley
authors.affiliation: a Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.|b Department of Neurology , The University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ , USA.|c Southern Arizona Veteran's Health Care System , Tucson , AZ , USA.
authors.forename: Steven Z
authors.initials: SZ
authors.lastname: Rapcsak
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000381:Agraphia / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007808:Language Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: Agraphia; alexia; aphasia; phonological text alexia; spelling; writing