What evidence is there for dual route model in adult reading - Essay Example

on the other hand, which is the route used by the brain to be able to read new words or words that the reader has no previous experience with, or non-words, that is a string of letters which are not actually words, the brain uses phonology or the sound system of a language based on the letters being read. The lexical route is necessary for the pronunciation of irregular words, such as the word colonel, which would be wrongly pronounced using the non-lexical route. For a non-word such as spint, the non-lexical route would be used to produce a pronunciation.

This paper presents evidences of the dual route model in adult reading through a review of previous researches conducted involving the dual route model. These evidences lead the author to conclude that adult reading is accomplished primarily using this model, and variations and alternatives to the model warrant further study. In an article by Gurd and Marshall (1993), mention was included regarding brain lesions sustained by previously literate adults that could result in impairments of reading and writing in patients who were otherwise cognitively intact.

It goes on to mention that the paper by Castles and Coltheart (1993) should lay to rest a number of controversies regarding developmental dyslexia. They have firmly established that the functional architecture of the normal adult reading system includes two routes for assigning sound and meaning to sequences of letters. The non-lexical procedure associates each letter or letter-cluster in a string with its regular sound-value, as in traditional phonics. This letter string may be a known word or a non-word.

On the other hand, the lexical procedure uses the orthography of the known word, with its known meaning and pronunciation. It was also shown that the two routes can be independently impaired in previously literate adults who have suffered brain damage. Damage to the lexical route allowed the reader to read aloud regular and non-words well but not so