OVERCROWDING IN SEMANTIC NEIGHBORHOODS - MODELING DEEP DYSLEXIA

Deep dyslexic (DD) readers produce semantic errors during word naming and are impaired at nonword naming. Previous models of DD have explain ed this co-occurrence of deficits by postulating damage to both lexica l and nonlexical pathways in the reading system. Buchanan, Hildebrandt and MacKinnon (1994) offered an alternative explanation that resulted in the prediction that words with several semantic and phonological n eighbors would be read with less success by DDs than would words with few neighbors. This paper briefly describes a test of the semantic nei ghborhood hypothesis using HAL, a computational model of semantic spac e developed by Lund and Burgess (in press).