Written Language Disorders

202 Pages·1991·4.189 MB·

by  R. Malatesha Joshi, P. G. Aaron (auth.), R. Malatesha Joshi (eds.)

WRITTEN LANGUAGE DISORDERS
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITION
VOLUME 2
Series Editor:
R. Malatesha Joshi, Oklahoma State University, U.S.A.
Advisory Board:
Alfonso Caramazza, The Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A.
George Hynd, University o/Georgia, U.S.A.
C.K. Leong, The University o/Victoria, Canada
John Marshall, University 0/ Oxford, U.K.
Gabriele Miceli, Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Loraine Obler, City University 0/ New York, U.S.A.
Sandra Witelson, McMaster University, Canada
The pUIpose of the Neuropsychology and Cognition series is to bring out volumes
that promote understanding in topics relating brain and behavior. It is intended for
use by both clinicians and research scientists in the fields of neuropsychology,
cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, speech and hearing, as well as education.
Examples of topics to be covered in the series would relate to memory, language
acquisition and breakdown, reading, attention, developing and aging brain. By
addressing the theoretical, empirical, and applied aspects of brain-behavior
relationships, this series will try to present the information in the fields of neuro
psychology and cognition in a coherent manner.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end o/this volume.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
DISORDERS
Edited by
R. MALA TESHA JOSHI
Oklahoma State University
..
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wrltten language dlsorders I edited by R. Malatesha Joshl.
p. cm. -- (Neuropsychology and cognltlon ; 21
Includes bibllographlcal references and Index.
ISBN 978-94-010-5659-5 ISBN 978-94-011-3732-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3732-4
1. Agraphla. 2. AleXla. 1. JOShl, R. Malatesha. II. Serles.
RC429.W75 1991
616.85·53--dc20 90-44392
ISBN 978-94-010-5659-5
Printed an acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE Vll
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS IX
R. MALATESHA JOSHI and P. G. AARON / Developmental
reading and spelling disabilities: Are these dissociable? 1
BEVERLY D. K. MAUL and LINNEA EHRI / Memory for
spellings in normal and dysgraphic spellers: Do dysgraphics
spell by ear but not eye? 25
HYLA RUBIN / Morphological knowledge and writing ability 43
ALFONSO CARAMAZZA and ARGYE E. HILLIS / Modularity:
A perspective from the analysis of acquired dyslexia and
dysgraphia 71
GARBRIELE MICELI / On the interpretation of across-patient
variability: The mechanisms underlying nonlexical spelling errors 85
YVAN LEBRUN and LUC DE VREESE / Pure alexia 105
YVAN LEBRUN, F. DEVREAUX and CHANTAL LELEUX /
Writer's cramp 127
J. RISPENS and 1. A. V AN BRECKELAER / Hyperlexia: Defini-
tion and criterion 143
PHILIP A. LUELSDORFF and E. ANN EYLAND / A psycho
lingustic model of the bilingual speller 165
INDEX OF NAMES 191
SUBJECT INDEX 195
v
PREFACE
Although anecdotal reports of loss of once-acquired reading ability was
noticed in the individuals who had sustained brain damage as early as the
year AD. 30, systematic enquires of alexia were not undertaken until the
latter part of the nineteenth century. The two anatomo-pathological
studies carried out by Dejerine in 1891 and 1892 mark the beginning
of scholarly investigation of reading failure. Interestingly, the study of de
velopmental reading disability also began to receive attention at about the
same time when Pringle Morgan described the case of a 14-year-old boy
who had great difficulty in reading and writing. Since then sporadic
reports of developmental reading-writing failure began to appear in medi
cal and educational journals even though such investigation went on at an
unhurried pace. In the past two decades, however, the situation has
changed enormously and hundreds of articles that have investigated
developmental and acquired cognitive disabilities have been published.
Disorders of spoken language and written language are two areas that
have been extensively addressed by these articles. Those who study
disorders of language come from a wide variety of backgrounds and their
reports are also published in a variety of journals. The purpose of the
present volume is to bring some important research findings of written
language disorders together and present them in a coherent format.
In Chapter 1, Joshi and Aaron challenge the validity of the notion of
the putative "poor speller but good reader'. They contend that even
though superficially some poor spellers may appear to be good readers,
thorough investigation of these subjects would reveal subtle reading dis
abilities. They support this conclusion with evidence collected from three
college students.
In Chapter 2, Maul and Ehri describe experiments that tested the
hypothesis that normal spellers use the same processes to read and spell
whereas poor spellers use different processes to read and spell. Based on
the results of their investigation, they conclude that both good and poor
spellers use phonological as well as visual-orthographic processes to spell
and read.
One of the often quoted reasons for the high incidence of reading and
spelling problems in the English language is that there is no consistent
relationship between the written and spoken forms of English words.
However, investigations that have addressed this issue from a morpho
phonemic perspective have concluded that, to a large extent, English
language is a rule-governed system of communication. The influence of
Vll
viii PREFACE
morphophonological knowledge on the writing performance of very young
children is examined by Rubin. The results of this study are presented in
Chapter 3.
Whether or not brain damage has differential effect on linguistic and
perceptual process is examined in Chapter 4 by Caramazza and Hillis.
Their investigations of neuropsychological patients reveal that cognitive
skills such as reading and spelling are dissociable. In Chapter 5, Miceli
presents a model of the spelling processes based on the evidence collected
from patients whose cognitive skills are impaired. This model can accom
modate the individual differences that are seen in the performance of
these subjects.
In the next chapter, Lebrun and De Vreese examine the different forms
of alexias. They conclude that there is a great deal of variability among
different individuals as far as the nature of symptoms and the rate of
recovery are concerned. These authors conclude that because of such
variability, a unitary theory of alexia may not be possible.
In Chapter 7, Lebrun, Devreaux, and Leleux describe the seldom
investigated graphomotor disability called "Writer's cramp". The authors
point out that there is no uniformity of symptoms in writer's cramp and
conclude the chapter with recommendations for diagnosis and therapy.
In contrast to dyslexia, the reading disability known as hyperlexia has a
rather brief history. The syndrome of hyperlexia includes superior word
decoding skill and an associated poor comprehension. Rispens and van
Berckelaer describe the syndrome in Chapter 8 and present criteria for
the diagnosis of hyperlexia.
In Chapter 9, Luelsdorff and Eyland propose a psycholinguistic model
derived from observations made on the spelling performance of bilinguals.
Because bilingual subjects who become alexic are rare, the study of
bilinguals provides a new perspective for the investigation of the neuro
psychology of language processing.
In spite of the fact that the articles presented in this book address
varying aspects of the written language, they present a single theme,
namely the understanding of the neuropsychology of written language pro
cessing. Authors of the chapters contained in this volume are well known
for their research in this area and I thank them for their contributions.
R. MALA TESHA JOSHI
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
P. G. AARON, Department of Educational Psychology, Indiana State
University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 47809, U.S.A.
ALFONSO CARAMAZZA, Cognitive Science Center, The Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, Maryland, 21218, U.S.A.
FRANCOISE DEVREUX, Neurolinguistics Department, School of Medi
cine, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1090 Brussels, Belgium.
LUC DE VREESE, Neurolinguistics Department, School of Medicine,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1090 Brussels, Belgium.
LINNEA C. EHRI, Division of Education, College of Letters and
Sciences, University of California, Davis, California, 95616, U.S.A.
E. ANN EYLAND, Macquaire University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Aus
tralia.
ARGYE E. HILLIS, Cognitive Science Center, The Johns Hopkins Uni
versity, Baltimore, Maryland, 21218, U.S.A.
R. MALA TESHA JOSHI, Department of Curriculum and Instruction,
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078, U.S.A.
YVAN LEBRUN, Neurolinguistics Department, School of Medicine, Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, 1090 Brussels, Belgium.
CHANTAL LELEUX, Neurolinguistics Department, School of Medicine,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1090 Brussels, Belgium.
PHILIP A. LUELSDORFF, Universitat Regensburg, 8400 Regensburg,
Federal Republic of Germany.
BEVERLY D. K. MAUL, West Davis Intermediate School, 1207 Sycamore
Lane, Davis, CA 95616_llS.A.
GABRIELE MICELI, Clinica Neurologica, Universita Cattolica, Largo A.
Gemelli 8, 00168, Rome, Italy.
JAN RISPENS, Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, Vakgroep Kinder
studies, Postbus 80.140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands
HYLA RUBIN, Graduate Department of Speech Pathology, Faculty of
Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5G lL4.
I. A. V AN BERCKELAER, Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, Uni
versity of Leiden, 2334 BP Leiden, The Netherlands.
IX
R. MALATESHA JOSHI AND P. G. AARON
DEVELOPMENTAL READING AND SPELLING
DISABILITIES: ARE THESE DISSOCIABLE?
1. INTRODUCTION
Studies of developmental dyslexia in children suggest that poor spelling is
an inevitable concomitant of poor reading (Cook, 1981; Gerber, 1984;
Nelson and Warrington, 1976). This should come as no surprise since it
appears that spelling-sound relational rules are used in both reading and
spelling (Baron et at., 1980) and that many dyslexic subjects are deficient
in these grapheme-phoneme conversion skills (Aaron, 1989; Aaron et al.,
1984; Perfetti and Hogaboam, 1975; Snowling, 1980). A recent study by
Waters et al. (1985), which specifically examined the question whether
children use similar processes to read and spell words, found that third
grade children, regardless of their ability level, used spelling-sound corre
spondences in both reading and spelling. Conversely, studies of spelling
ability also have shown that poor spellers are deficient in decoding skills
(Spache, 1940) and that acquisition of spelling involves progressive inter
nalization of orthographic rules (Beers, 1980). These observations are
further buttressed by the classical neurology doctrine that writing dis
orders do not exist in isolation but occur simultaneously and equally often
with disorders of speech and the reason why this view has persisted so
long is that it is supported by the bulk of clinical experience (Margolin,
1984).
Viewed in the light of these observations, the few published reports of
the occurrence of pure developmental spelling disability without being
accompanied by reading deficits present a paradox. Spelling disability that
reportedly exists along with normal reading ability is referred to as
"developmental spelling retardation" (Nelson and Warrington, 1974),
"unexpected spelling problems" (Frith, 1980), "spelling only retardation"
(Jorm, 1983), and "specific spelling problems" (Frith, 1984). Occasionally,
a more descriptive lable such as "poor spellers who are good readers"
(Frith, 1980, p. 514) is used.
The findings of a few recently published neuropsychological studies
also suggest a possible dissociation between spelling and reading. One
frequently quoted study is by Beauvois and Derouesne (1979) which
proposed a dissociation between the phonological route to reading and the
phonological route to spelling because the patient was impaired in reading
but not in spelling (cf, Temple, 1985a). It should, however, be noted that
R.G., the patient studied by Beauvois and Derouesne, committed some
spelling mistakes and that "the patient's writing was not entirely normal"
2 R. MALATESHA JOSHI AND P. G. AARON
(p. 1120). Other neuropsychological studies claim a dissociation between
reading and spelling because the etiology and symptoms of the reading
disorder are categorically different from those of the spelling disorder. For
instance, Hatfield and Patterson (1983) describe a patient whose oral
reading could be interpreted as that of a surface dyslexic but whose
spelling was reminiscent of phonological dysgraphia. Temple (1985b) has
described a developmental dyslexic who, according to her, was not a
surface dyslexic but was a surface dysgraphic. These cases are more fully
discussed at the end of this chapter and alternative interpretations are
suggested.
The existence of some putative adults who are proficient readers but
inconsistent spellers is also often cited as evidence of the independence of
reading and spelling processes. Hatfield and Patterson (1983) address this
"curious discrepancy" between reading and writing skills in normal and
even highly literate adults and cite their professional colleague RP. as an
example.
A possible resolution to the controversy of whether or not spelling and
reading are independent processes could be found in a statement by
Bryant and Bradley (1980) that they have encountered children of 11 and
12 who read well but spell appallingly but who, later on at around the age
of 13, experience serious reading difficulties because they are unable to
use phonological strategy to meet the increased demands of reading. In
view of this statement, adults who are poor spellers but who, nevertheless,
appear to be proficient readers, probably manage to read well by using a
whole word visual recognition strategy. If sufficiently well developed, such
a strategy can mask the underlying phonological deficit. Such a strategy,
however, will fail in spelling because, unlike reading, spelling a word is a
recall task and the appropriate letter strings have to be generated on the
basis of phonology. If it could be shown that skilled reading could be
accomplished in spite of poor spelling ability, it would also demonstrate
that the phonological route is not necessary for skilled reading. The
implications of such a finding for models of reading are obvious. It will be
argued in this paper that such a condition does not exist and that upon
close scrutiny, the so-called "good reader but poor speller" does show
reading deficiencies at least under some unusual conditions. In addition to
these theoretical implications, the relationship between spelling and read
ing is of practical value for the reason that if spelling and reading are
separable skills, recent developments in early reading instruction that
approach reading through writing (Write to Read) are based on insecure
foundations.
2. CASE STUDIES
Three college students who approached the psychology clinic seeking help