MANIPULATING TEMPORAL COMPONENTS DURING SINGLE-WORD PROCESSING TO FACILITATE ACCESS TO STORED ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS IN LETTER-BY-LETTER READERS

Abstract

This study investigated the benefits of rapid presentation of written words as a treatment strategy to enhance reading speed and accuracy in two participants with acquired alexia who are letter-by-letter readers. Previous studies of pure alexia have shown that when words are rapidly presented, participants can accurately perform lexical decision and category judgment tasks, yet they are unable to read words aloud. These studies suggest that rapid presentation of words could be used as a treatment technique to promote whole-word reading. It was predicted that treatment utilizing rapid presentation (250/500 ms) will increase reading speed and accuracy of both trained and untrained words compared to the words trained in standard presentation (5000 ms). A single-subject ABACA/ACABA multiple baseline treatment design was used. Treatment was provided twice per week for four weeks for both rapid and standard presentation treatment. Each session comprised a spoken-to-written word decision task and semantic category judgment task. Stimuli included 80 trained words divided between the two treatments and 20 untrained controls. Weekly probes to assess reading accuracy were administered after every two treatment sessions. Based on effect sizes, results showed no consistent unambiguous benefit for rapid or standard presentation treatment. However, possible generalization to untrained words due to rapid presentation treatment was observed. Future research is warranted to investigate the effectiveness of rapid presentation treatment in letter-by-letter readers.