Impaired oral reading in two atypical dyslexics: a comparison with a computational lexical-analogy model

A computational model of reading was developed based upon the notion that the structural relationship between orthography and phonology is of greater importance than the dimension of semantics for the reading aloud of single words. Degradation of this model successfully simulated the reading performance of two patients with atypical acquired dyslexia. The first patient CAV, studied and described in the literature by Warrington in 1981, presented with unusual concrete word dyslexia, i.e., he had a category-specific reading deficit for concrete words compared with abstract words. The second patient BG is a phonological dyslexic who, although displaying a strong concreteness effect (concrete words read better than abstract words), was able to read functors individually perfectly well, a pattern that is rarely if ever seen. The computational model was used to generate a set of words for which it was predicted that BG would show no concreteness effect. The results of BG's reading of these words were consistent with this prediction, thereby providing greater support for the validity of the model. It is concluded that a computational approach that attempts not only to reproduce the core symptoms of the major varieties of acquired dyslexia but also to simulate clinical data from specific patients has much to contribute to the understanding of cognitive deficits and to the design of effective rehabilitation strategies.