Neuropsychological assessment and treatment of disorders of reading

Brain injury can disrupt the reading abilities of individuals whose performance was previously quite normal in a variety of different ways. This chapter discusses some of the most common and the most theoretically important types of reading impairment. It begins with descriptions of the peripheral dyslexias (pure alexia, letter-by-letter reading, neglect dyslexia) in which reading appears to be affected prior to the point at which the word is recognized as a familiar visual form. Descriptions then follow of central dyslexic impairments (deep dyslexia, phonological dyslexia, surface dyslexia, and reading in dementia) in which reading processes generally appear to be intact up to the point at which the meaning or pronunciation of a word must be generated.