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Connections and disconnections: Acquired dyslexia in a computational model of reading processes.
Authors:
Patterson, K., Seidenberg, M.S. & McClelland, J.L.
Reference:
In R.G.M. Morris (Ed.), Parallel Distributed Processing: Implications for Psychology and Neurobiology (pp. 131-181). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Year of publication:
1989
CBU number:
2255
Abstract:
A recently developed computational model of translating print to speech differs radically from most traditional, information processing accounts of this skill. The connectionist or PDP (parallel distributed processing) model denies the need for either stored representations of known words or explicit mapping rules between letters (or letter clusters) and their corresponding sounds. Yet the model yields performance characteristics which, in normal adult readers, have been taken as evidence for these two types of processing resources. This chapter considers a challenge to the PDP model from disorders of reading in adult neurological patients: two distinctive patterns of acquired dyslexia have been considered to provide particularly strong support for traditional models. A series of experiments with simulated 'lesions' to the model's network produced many (though not all) of the features of one pattern of human reading disorder.
