DOES LETTER-BY-LETTER READING INVOLVE THE SPELLING SYSTEM

WARRINGTON and SHALLICE (Brain 103, 99-112, 1980) proposed that letter -by-letter readers can no longer access the visual word-form system, a nd read by using the spelling system 'in reverse'. Contrary to their s uggestion, this paper presents the case of a letter-by-letter reader w ho appears to use quite different strategies in word reading and spell ing. Reading and spelling are both impaired, but they appear to be imp aired in different ways. Most strikingly, the patient's spelling error s consist largely of phonological regularizations-indeed there is litt le evidence that he has any lexical spelling knowledge available-where as there are virtually no regularizations amongst his reading errors. These are largely visual paralexias and letter misidentifications. It is suggested that this pattern is more easily explained in terms of co mpensatory mechanisms that access the reading lexicon than by use of t he spelling system 'in reverse'.