Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines a number of models in which an early graphemic description of the stimulus is parsed into syllabic or morphemic units. It utilizes some of the peculiarly interesting properties of the Japanese orthography to analyze an acquired reading disorder that is of considerable theoretical interest. In the early 1960s, experimental work on the mental lexicon was largely concerned with its role in the visual identification of words. If the major impact that the R. L. Venezky work had on psychology was to provide experimenters with an authoritative source of stimulus material, the influence of the more general studies of orthographic representation was altogether more theoretically pervasive. Invariance of spelling-sound correspondences is not the only factor contributing to the straightforwardness of translation between the domains of orthography, phonology, and meaning.