Characteristics of Acquired Phonological Dyslexia in Korean

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to identify characteristics of acquired phonological dyslexia in Korean patients with brain damage and relationship between those characteristics and brain lesions. Methods: Thirty normal controls and six brain-damaged patients participated in the study. Assessment tasks of orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing were developed based on the cognitive model of single word reading and were administered to participants to evaluate reading ability. Orthographic processing assessment was performed to evaluate whether participants recognized letters and visual word forms. Phonological tasks assessed the ability to segment and manipulate sounds in words. A semantic task was performed in order to examine if semantic knowledge was preserved. Reading aloud task of words/nonwords was also performed with the intention of identifying characteristics of phonological dyslexia. Results: There was a significant difference in orthographic, semantic, and reading aloud performance between the normal control group and patient group. The patient group showed relatively preserved orthographic and semantic processing although most of them were not able to perform the phonological tasks. Significant differences between word and nonword reading aloud in patients indicated features of phonological dyslexia. Conclusion: Orthographic, phonological, and semantic tasks were administered to participants with perisylvian lesion. Our results showed impaired phonological processing and nonword reading compared to relatively preserved performance on orthographic, semantic tasks and word reading. These results are consistent with previous studies on phonological dyslexia, and characteristics of acquired phonological dyslexia in the Korean language were associated with perisylvian language areas.