The Dual-Route Approach

A connectionist feedforward network implementing a mapping from orthography to phonology is described. The model develops a view of the reading system that accounts for both irreguh word and pseudoword reading without relying on any system of explicit or implicit conversion rules. The model assumes, however, that reading is supported by 2 procedures that work successively: a global procedure using knowledge about entire words and an analytic procedure based on the activation of word syllabic segments. The model provides an account of the basic effects that characterize human skilled reading performance including a frequency by consistency interaction and a position-of-irregularity effect. Furthamore, early in training, the network shows a performance similar to that of less skilled readers. It also offers a plausible account of the patterns of acquired phonological and surface dyslexia when lesioned in different ways. Much research in cognitive psychology and the neuropsychol-ogy of language is aimed toward understanding how orthography is translated to phonology when people read aloud and how this transcoding process is acquired. Among the various theoretical conceptions of the architecture of the reading system that have been described, two main classes of models have emerged, dual