Surface dyslexia and dysgraphia: dual routes, single lexicon

Abstract

The dual route interpretation of surface dyslexia as a deficit in word-specific activation has been challenged recently by computational models that incorporate a unitary print-to-sound mechanism. The most current of these makes no allowance for word-specific nodes, but obtains the pronunciation of regular and exception words by weighted connections between graphemic and phonemic units. Damaging the model in a variety of ways produces a pattern that appears consistent with the performance of many surface dyslexic patients. Exception words are mispronounced more often than regular words, though accuracy deteriorates on both categories. In addition, frequency has no clear-cut effect on the probability of reading an exception word correctly. We describe the existence of a variant of the syndrome that is not fully captured by the above simulations. MP, a surface dyslexic, demonstrates a dissociation between lexical and nonlexical pronunciation of written words. We also show that performance on irregular words varies as a function of their frequency. We provide evidence that the locus of the subject's deficit arises at the level of the representations in a single orthographic lexicon that subserves both reading and writing.

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