ABSTRACT

Reading is subject to its own range of acquired disorders in just the same way as are writing, speech perception, and speech production. Disorders of reading consequent upon brain injury are called acquired dyslexias. The study of acquired dyslexias was one of the first areas to be investigatedintensively from acognitive neuropsychological perspective, and many qualitatively different forms of acquired dyslexia have been identified, each with different symptoms, different interpretations, and different implications for theories of normal reading. New varieties are still being reported, and our coverage here does not claim to be exhaustive. As in the two previous chapters we shall confine ourselves to disorders identifiable in the processing of single words, and shall defer disorders of the processing of sentences and connected text until Chapter 9. Recent reviews of cognitive neuropsychological investigations of the acquired dyslexias can be found in Coltheart (1981; 1986), Patterson (1981), Newcombe and Marshall (1981), and Ellis (1984b).