Introduction

Conceptions about surface dyslexia, in fact about reading disorders generally, indeed about neuropsychological deficits even more generally, are changing rapidly. One significant aspect of change is the growing realisation of or emphasis on the fact that symptoms rarely imply unique causes. T. Shallice and Warrington were the first authors to caution against the single-cause error with respect to surface dyslexia, noting that reliance on the assignment of phonology to subword orthographic units might be provoked by any one of several different impairments in the procedures for addressing the output phonology for a whole familiar written word. The chapter describes four patients who might regularise bear as "beer" in oral reading but nevertheless correctly understand the target word as referring to an animal. There are interesting and theoretically important differences among these patients.