CONNECTIONISM, PHONOLOGY, READING, AND REGULARITY IN DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA

Tests of the ''phonological deficit'' account of developmental dyslexi a have produced apparently inconsistent results. We show how a connect ionist approach to dyslexic reading development can resolve the parado x. A ''dyslexic'' model of reading was created by reducing the quality of the phonological representations available to the model during lea rning. The model behaved similarly to dyslexic children in that it had a selectively reduced ability to process nonwords, but showed normal effects of words' spelling-to-sound regularity. An experimental test o f the model's predictions confirmed that dyslexic children perform sim ilarly, in that they are impaired on irregular words to the same exten t as nondyslexic children. It is concluded that developmentally dyslex ic reading can indeed be understood in terms of impaired phonological representations and that the adoption of a modeling approach resolves an apparent paradox in the experimental literature. (C) 1997 Academic Press.