Pk. Newton et C. Barry, CONCRETENESS EFFECTS IN WORD PRODUCTION BUT NOT WORD COMPREHENSION INDEEP DYSLEXIA, Cognitive neuropsychology, 14(4), 1997, pp. 481-509
We present a patient, LW, who, like all deep dyslexics, is more able t
o read aloud concrete than abstract words. In order to explore the cau
se of this concreteness effect in word production, we tested LW's comp
rehension of concrete and abstract words, in the Shallice and McGill w
ord-picture matching task, in a synonym judgement task, and in a defin
ition-to-word matching task. LW showed no significant impairment of he
r comprehension of abstract high-frequency words in these tasks, despi
te being unable to read most of the words aloud. We conclude that the
concreteness effect in oral reading in LW cannot be due solely to a se
mantic deficit for abstract words. We propose the NICE model, in which
concreteness is an important dimension of normal lexicalisation, and
suggest that deep dyslexia reflects the ability of qualitatively norma
l but isolated semantics to access or ''drive'' unique entries in a ph
onological output lexicon (subject to a pathological increased aphasic
''threshold'' for lexicalisation).