Affiliations: Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire en
santé mentale de Québec (CRIUSMQ), Département de
réadaptation, Université Laval, QC, Canada | Institute for Cognitive Neurology (INECO) and
University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Note: [] Corresponding author: Maximiliano A. Wilson, Département
de réadaptation, Faculté de médecine – Pavillon
Ferdinand-Vandry, 1050, ave de la Médecine, bureau 4483,
Université Laval, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada. Tel.: +1 418 656 2131, ext. 2143;
Fax: +1 418 656 5476; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Surface dyslexia has been attributed to an overreliance on the
sub-lexical route for reading. Typically, surface dyslexic patients commit
regularisation errors when reading irregular words. Also, semantic dementia has
often been associated with surface dyslexia, leading to some explanations of
the reading impairment that stress the role of semantics in irregular word
reading. Nevertheless, some patients have been reported with unimpaired ability
to read irregular words, even though they show severe comprehension impairment.
We present the case of M.B., the first Spanish-speaking semantic dementia
patient to be reported who shows unimpaired reading of non-words, regular
words, and – most strikingly – irregular loan words. M.B. has
severely impaired comprehension of the same words he reads correctly (whether
regular or irregular). We argue that M.B.'s pattern of performance shows that
irregular words can be correctly read even with impaired semantic knowledge
corresponding to those words.
