Alexia Classifications

Author: Brett McCardel, MS, CCC-SLP

When diagnosing an alexia, there are 2 major types of classifications: ๐—ฃ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—”๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜…๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐˜€ and ๐—–๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—”๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜…๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐˜€ โฃ
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๐˜—๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฑ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ญ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜น๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ด affect the early stages of the reading process and involve difficulty perceiving the written word. In a Peripheral Alexia, individual letters may be misidentified and lead to errors such as reading โ€œbookโ€ for BOOT.โฃ
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๐˜Š๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ญ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜น๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ด affect the later stages of the reading process and involve impairments of lexical processing and sublexical processing. In a Central Alexia, the semantic system may be impaired which results in the word COW being misread as โ€œhorseโ€ (thereby making a semantic substitution).โฃ
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The major alexia classifications in the research literature are as follows:โฃ
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๐—ฃ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—นโฃ
-Neglect Alexia and Hemianopic Alexiaโฃ
-Attentional Alexiaโฃ
-Visual Alexiaโฃ
-Letter-by-Letter Alexiaโฃ
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๐—–๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—นโฃ
-Surface Alexiaโฃ
-Deep Alexiaโฃ
-Phonological Alexiaโฃ
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Interested in learning more about each of these classifications and how they are diagnosed? Check out our resource โ€œ๐—”๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜…๐—ถ๐—ฎ ๐—–๐—น๐—ฎ๐˜€๐˜€๐—ถ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜€โ€ on the Archways Resources site (link in bio)!โฃ
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#aphasia #aphasiatherapy #neurorehabilitation #medslp #reading #alexia

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