Deep and Surface Dyslexia in Chinese

A study of 11 Chinese brain-damaged patients with reading disorders indicates that reading aloud a nonalphabetic script, like reading alphabetic scripts, can be accomplished using two distinct routines: one which associates a whole written word with its complete pronunciation, and one which utilises parts of the written word. Each routine can be selectively impaired by brain-damage, resulting in different patterns of reading disability, i.e. "deep" and "surface" dyslexia. These data are consistent with the independent neural organisation of each routine, and the generality of the two-routine model for reading alphabetic and nonalphabetic scripts.