Search

Letter-by-letter reading is a neuropsychological syndrome characterized by oral reading which seems to be mediated by explicit naming of constituent letters of the printed string. Thus reading time rises abnormally as a function of the length of the items to-be-read. This syndrome is generally interpreted as indicating a disconnection within the normal reading system prior to the activation of the visual and phonological lexical access routes. The patient retains a subsidiary strategy of spelling words by naming their constituent letters and uses this strategy for planning their pronunciation. If this interpretation is correct then reading aloud in letter-by-letter reading should not be affected by the features of the letter string which are stored lexically as the functional disconnection is postulated to occur prior to this stage. In this paper we report the case of a letter-by-letter reader who shows some signs which are puzzling in terms of current interpretations of the syndrome. They can be summarized as follows: (1) The patient reads words better than he reads nonwords; (2) Concrete words are processed more holistically while abstract words are processed more letter-by-letter; (3) Lexical decisions can be made far more rapidly than words can be read aloud. These three signs are very difficult to account for if reading is accomplished solely through a non-lexical reversed spelling strategy. Our experimental investigations of this patient are reported and alternative models assuming strategic control over the reading mechanism are discussed.

The coordination of the eye movement control system with comprehension processes was studied. Eye movements were monitored while subjects read paragraphs containing an anaphoric noun phrase. In Experiment 1, fixations on the anaphoric noun were shorter when its antecedent was close and typical of the noun category than when it was distant and/or atypical. Subjects took longer reading the words following the anaphoric noun when the antecedent was atypical than when it was typical. In Experiment 2, distance of antecedent affected anaphor fixation times for category name anaphors but not for general noun anaphors (e.g., "object"). The results suggest that the eyes do not wait for the completion of anaphor resolution processes. Rather, these processes are completed after the eyes have left the anaphoric noun. The different patterns of effects on the anaphors themselves and the post-anaphor region were interpreted to reflect two different stages in anaphor resolution.

Earlier investigations of deaf students' test-taking strategies have described visual matching strategies consisting generally of locating a word in the question, locating the same word in the text, and selecting a response in visual proximity to that word. Studies to date have utilized multiple-choice measures. The present investigation sought to confirm and extend earlier findings by (a) determining whether visual matching test-taking strategies are used by deaf students in testing situations requiring them to generate responses; (b) describing these strategies, if found; (c) determining whether visual matching is related to overall test performance of deaf readers; and (d) determining whether there are differences between the strategies used by deaf and hearing readers with comparable SAT-HI reading comprehension test performance. The results of this investigation indicate extensive use of visual matching test-taking strategies by deaf subjects but not by hearing subjects. The extent of strategy use was not related to deaf subjects' overall performance on the lookback test. Nine variations of strategy were identified and described. Implications are drawn for teachers, researchers, and other practitioners working with deaf children.