Reading comprehension without phonological mediation: further evidence from a Chinese aphasic individual

An important issue in visual word comprehension literature is whether or not semantic access is mediated by phonological processing. In this paper, we present a Chinese individual, YGA, who provides converging evidence to directly address this issue. YGA has sustained damage to the left posterior superior and middle temporal lobe, and shows difficulty in orally name pictures and reading printed words aloud. He makes phonological errors on these tasks and also semantic errors on picture naming, indicating a deficit at accessing the phonological representations for output. However, he is intact at understanding the meaning of visually presented words. Such a profile challenges the hypothesis that semantic access in reading is phonologically mediated and provides further evidence for the universal principle of direct semantic access in reading.