ABSTRACT
Reading therapies are a relatively recent development in aphasia despite the dyslexias providing the initial impetus for developments in cognitive neuropsychology in the 1960s and 1970s. While historically, for many clinicians working with people with aphasia, reading and writing impairments have taken a lower priority than the more visible deficits in spoken production, a greater focus is now apparent on reading difficulties, both in research and, we would say, in clinical practice. This is most likely contributed to by the use of computers as a therapy medium and most certainly motivated, at least to some extent, by client goals. Those studies reported in the literature focus primarily on pure alexia (letter-by-letter reading) and orthographic-to-phonological conversion, with the individual differences between clients resulting in slight differences in the choice, progression and outcome of therapy. Perhaps more so than in the previous chapters, the terminology used in reading studies is worthy of mention. Similar to the frequent synonymous use of the terms aphasia and dysphasia, alexi. and dyslexi. are often used interchangeably by some authors and considered to differentiate partial from total loss of reading abilities. Throughout this chapter, terms used by the respective authors have been retained with no inferences drawn regarding the authors' orientation. In addition, some authors refer to functor. synonymously with function word. and pseu-doword. instead of nonwords and we have consistently reported authors' terminology. The studies reviewed here are listed in Table 13.1.
