Affiliations: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and
Learning, Beijing Normal University, China | Hubei Normal University, China | Harvard University, USA | Friendship Hospital of Beijing, China
Note: [] Corresponding author: Hua Shu, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive
Neuroscience and Learning, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University,
Beijing, China. Tel.: +8610 5880-8186; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: We present a Chinese-speaking patient, SJ, who makes phonological
errors across all tasks involving oral production. Detailed analyses of the
errors across different tasks reveal that the patterns are very similar for
reading, oral picture naming, and repetition tasks, which are also comparable
to the error patterns of the phonological buffer deficit cases reported in the
literature. The nature of the errors invites us to conclude that the patient's
phonological output buffer is selectively impaired. Different from previously
reported cases, SJ's deficits in oral production tasks are not accompanied by a
similar impairment of writing performance. We argue that this dissociation is
evidence that the phonological output buffer is not involved in writing Chinese
words. Furthermore, the majority of SJ's errors occur at the onset of a
syllable, indicating that the buffer has a structure that makes the onset more
prone to impairment.
Keywords: Phonological output buffer, Chinese, oral production
