Treatment for alexia with agraphia following left ventral occipito-temporal damage: Strengthening orthographic representations common to reading and spelling

Purpose: Damage to left ventral occipito-temporal cortex can give rise to written language impairment characterized by pure alexia/letter-by-letter (LBL) reading, as well as surface alexia and agraphia. The purpose of this study was to examine the therapeutic effects of a combined treatment approach to address concurrent LBL reading with surface alexia/agraphia. Method: Simultaneous treatment to address slow reading and errorful spelling was administered to 3 individuals with reading and spelling impairments after left ventral occipito-temporal damage due to posterior cerebral artery stroke. Single-word reading/spelling accuracy, reading latencies, and text reading were monitored as outcome measures for the combined effects of multiple oral re-reading treatment and interactive spelling treatment. Results: After treatment, participants demonstrated faster and more accurate single-word reading and improved text-reading rates. Spelling accuracy also improved, particularly for untrained irregular words, demonstrating generalization of the trained interactive spelling strategy. Conclusion: This case series characterizes concomitant LBL with surface alexia/agraphia and demonstrates a successful treatment approach to address both the reading and spelling impairment.