Top-down and bottom-up effects in pure alexia: evidence from eye movements

The eye movements of a patient with pure alexia, GJ, were recorded as he read sentences in order to explore the roles of top-down and bottom-up information during letter-by-letter reading. Specifically, the effects of word frequency and word predictability were examined. Additional analyses examined the interaction of these effects with the lower level influences of word length and letter confusability. The results indicate that GJ is sensitive to all four of these variables in sentence reading. These findings support an interactive account of reading where letter-by-letter readers use both bottom-up and top-down information to decode words. Due to the disrupted bottom-up processes caused by damage to the Visual Word Form Area or the input connections to it, pure alexic patients rely more heavily on intact top-down information in reading.