Reading and writing impairments in Spanish-speaking individuals with primary progressive aphasia: A single-case...

Reading and writing impairments are frequent in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), yet their characterization in Spanish-speaking populations remains limited due to language-specific orthographic properties. The present study examined reading and writing impairments in 17 Spanish-speaking participants diagnosed with PPA (9 logopenic, 4 semantic, and 4 nonfluent), with the aim of identifying patterns of acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia across PPA variants. A single-case series design was employed, including individuals diagnosed with PPA and matched healthy control subjects. Participants were assessed using tasks of word and nonword reading, loanword reading, visual lexical decision with pseudohomophones, and writing to dictation of words and nonwords. Results showed that 94% of participants presented acquired dyslexia and 75% acquired dysgraphia. Both impairments were observed across all PPA variants. Regarding reading profiles, five cases of surface acquired dyslexia, two of phonological dyslexia, three of mixed dyslexia, and six unspecified profiles were identified. In writing, one case of surface acquired dysgraphia, one phonological, four mixed, and six unspecified profiles were observed. These findings provide relevant evidence regarding the presence and heterogeneity of acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia in Spanish-speaking individuals with PPA, and demonstrate that these patterns can be systematically identified when assessment procedures account for the linguistic characteristics of Spanish and the clinical features of this population.