Alexia in Indian bilinguals

Abstract

Dissociations in the degree and type of reading impairment in bilingual alexics have been attributed to a differential language representation in the brain. Two patients, one with pure alexia and the other with alexia and agraphia following stroke were evaluated in two languages, English and Kannada (a Dravidian language of South India with a semi-syllabic script). The patient with pure alexia had a severe impairment and made perceptual errors in reading English, while the second patient had mild alexia with visual paralexias in reading English. Both patients made predominantly script related visual errors in reading Kannada. However, in both, the errors made in Kannada resulted in predomina..