Surface dyslexia and surface dysgraphia: Treatment studies and their theoretical implications

Abstract

We report studies of a patient with acquired surface dyslexia and dysgraphia. His reading impairment was treated using the methods previously reported to be successful for surface dyslexia by Byng and Coltheart (1986); these methods were also successful with our patient. In addition, we observed, as Byng and Coltheart did, that when these methods are used there is incomplete but significant generalisation to the reading of untreated words. Connectionist simulations of the effects of damage to the language-processing system have taken this generalisation effect to be evidence that words are represented in a distributed fashion in that system; we challenge this inference, on the basis of data ..