Rb. Friedman, PHONOLOGICAL TEXT ALEXIA - POOR PSEUDOWORD READING PLUS DIFFICULTY READING FUNCTORS AND AFFIXES IN TEXT, Cognitive neuropsychology, 13(6), 1996, pp. 869-885
On single word reading tasks, two patients with impaired pseudoword re
ading (phonological alexia) read most words correctly and did not have
particular difficulty reading functors compared with nouns and adject
ives. However, their reading of text was markedly impaired, and errors
occurred predominantly on functors and affixed words. The results of
studies involving word span, pseudoword matching, and the technique of
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) suggest that these patients'
selective problems reading functors in text, and their difficulty read
ing pseudowords, are the result of an inability to hold multiple phono
logical codes in memory. This may be the result of insufficient activa
tion of phonological representations, excessive retroactive and proact
ive phonological interference, or both.