NONCONSCIOUS READING - EVIDENCE FROM NEGLECT DYSLEXIA

In this study we present evidence which supports the view that reading mechanisms, if implicit assessed, are available also in the presence of a seven deficit of spatial awareness. A Stroop-like task was perfor med by a right brain-damaged patient affected by severe extrapersonal neglect and neglect dyslexia. In reading words and color words, the pa tient showed the usual pattern of neglect errors; omission, substituti on and addition errors. However, when asked to name the colors in whic h color words were written. naming time was found to be affected by th e meaning of those words he was not able to read correctly. The patter n of results in MD and in a group of normal subjects, who performed a modified version of the Stroop test performed by MD, have been interpr eted as evidence of MD's implicit reading of the left-hand letters of color words during the Stroop test. The theoretical implications of th is finding are discussed. Moreover, the comparison between the perform ance of MD and the performance of another group of normal subjects sug gested that implicit processing in MD was carried out at a lower level of efficiency than in normals.