The role of familiar letter combinations in phonological dyslexia

Abstract

We report two cases of acquired phonological dyslexia. JW and MRF read competently real words including not only nouns but parts of speech, function words, Irregular words and abstract words. JW was also able to read Inflected words and unfamiliar surnames at the same level of competence. MRF had difficulties reading these latter categories of words. Neither patient was able to read non-words accurately. Both patients were significantly affected by the familiarity of non-word letter combinations. We Interpret our findings within a dual-route model for reading and we consider that both patients' reading performance was carried out by the semantic route. We discuss some implications of this postulation.