Neuropsychological experiments on transcoding between spoken and written language structures

This study examines the transcoding of word structures in the spoken linguistic sign system into the corresponding patterns of the written linguistic sign system and vice versa. Of a group of aphasic patients including some who had impairments of auditory word comprehension, of visual word comprehension, or of both, it is shown that the frequency of successful transcoding was extremely high, approximately 85%. This success is due to transcoding processes on the phoneme-grapheme level rather than on the semantic level of language. A small group of patients who failed the auditory-visual matching tests provide evidence of a separate transcoding deficit.