Use of Orthography in Spoken Naming in Aphasia

Abstract

An unusual pattern of responding by a woman with aphasia was analyzed with respect to cognitive neuropsychologic models of language processing. Spontaneous spelling aloud in spoken naming tasks has been reported in a small number of earlier cases. C.P. exhibited this behavior and, in addition, produced attempts at assembled phonologic naming that reflected errors in oral spelling. Assessment on a variety of single word-processing tasks and analysis of variables' underlying performance were carried out. The assessment revealed greater impairment to phonologic than to orthographic output lexical representations, and a less errorful route to spoken responses by spelling aloud and by assembling responses from grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. C.P.'s skills changed over time, and when written naming ceased to hold an advantage over spoken naming, the use of orthographic information in spoken naming ceased. C.P.'s performance supports the existence of separate orthographic and phonological lexicons, argues against the phonological mediation of spelling, and, as orthography in spoken naming seemed to be used strategically, shows some limits on the interaction of components within models of single word processing.