An acquired form of developmental phonological dyslexia

We report a longitudinal investigation of the development of reading in a c hild (DB) who suffered a left-hemisphere stroke in the early stages of read ing acquisition. Reading development was monitored over a 4-year period usi ng tests given on three occasions. Standardised reading tests showed that D B's reading problems became more pronounced with age and a specific reading disorder evolved. Her performance on orthographic and phonological reading tests revealed a complex pattern of development over time, consistent with a phonological reading disorder, that was principally characterised by def icient nonword reading. Her segmentation skills were initially impaired but improved to a normal level over time. Furthermore, she showed a marked red uction in the effects of spelling-sound regularity on word reading that wer e typical for her reading age and she produced significantly more lexical e rrors than reading-age controls, suggesting that she used mainly lexical st rategies for word reading. Her sublexical processes were primitive and were generally applied only to stimuli that were stated to be nonwords. We sugg est that DB has established an acquired form of developmental phonological dyslexia; the first such case to be reported.