Surface or deep dyslexia? A report of a patient who makes both regularization and semantic errors in oral reading

Abstract

This paper describes a patient (BE) who made both semantic errors and regularization errors in oral reading. However, she did not demonstrate other characteristics commonly associated with either surface dyslexia (e.g. superior reading of regular words than exception words) or deep dyslexia (e.g. abolished non-word reading). Her pattern of dyslexia was not one that could easily be characterized as fitting into any single presently identified syndrome. It is argued that BB suffered from both impaired phonological processing and an impairment in semantic processing, which resulted in some words being processed via a semantic route and some via a phonological route.

Key Words:

• deep dyslexia
• surface dyslexia
• phonological impairment
• semantic impairment