Whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic words in the Chinese lexicon: Data from acquired dyslexia

Issue title: Acquired Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Across Scripts

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Law, Sam-Po | Wong, Winsy | Chiu, Karen M.Y.

Affiliations: Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China | Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong, China

Note: [] Corresponding author. Fax: +852 2559 0060; E-mail: splaw@hkucc.hku.hk

Abstract: This study addresses the issue of the existence of whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic and multisyllabic words in the Chinese mental lexicon. A Cantonese brain-injured dyslexic individual with semantic deficits, YKM, was assessed on his abilities to read aloud and to comprehend disyllabic words containing homographic heterophonous characters, the pronunciation of which can only be disambiguated in word context. Superior performance on reading to comprehension was found. YKM could produce the target phonological forms without understanding the words. The dissociation is taken as evidence for whole-word representations for these words at the phonological level. The claim is consistent with previous account for discrepancy of the frequencies of tonal errors between reading aloud and object naming in Cantonese reported of another case study of similar deficits. Theoretical arguments for whole-word form representations for all multisyllabic Chinese words are also discussed.

Journal: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 16, no. 2-3, pp. 169-177, 2005