Letter position dyslexia (LPD) is a peripheral dyslexia that causes errors of letter position within words, such as reading cloud as could . In this study, we assessed the effect of various display manipulations and reading methods on the reading of 10 Hebrew readers with developmental LPD. These manipulations included tracking the letters with the index finger, spacing of two or six spaces between letters, presenting each letter in a different colour and inserting a sign between letters. We also tested the effect of diacritic markers, which provide disambiguating phonological information. Several display manipulations reduced the rate of letter migrations, and finger tracking was the most efficient technique. Diacritic markers were either ignored or made reading even more difficult. These findings indicate that LPD is treatable, and that the technique that is the easiest to apply, finger tracking, is also the most promising one in reducing letter migrations in LPD.

Letter position dyslexia (LPD) is a deficit in the encoding of letter position within words. It is characterized by errors of letter migration within words, such as reading trail as trial and form as from. In order to examine whether LPD is domain-specific, and to assess the domain-specificity of the visual analysis system, this study explored whether LPD extends to number reading, by testing whether individuals who have letter migrations in word reading also show migrations while reading numbers. The reading of words and numbers of 12 Hebrew-speaking individuals with developmental LPD was assessed. Experiment 1 tested reading aloud of words and numbers, and Experiment 2 tested same–different decisions in words and numbers. The findings indicated that whereas the participants with developmental LPD showed a large number of migration errors in reading words, 10 of them read numbers well, without migration errors, and not differently from the control participants. A closer inspection of the pattern of errors in words and numbers of two individuals who had migrations in both numbers and words showed qualitative differences in the characteristics of migration errors in the two types of stimuli. In word reading, migration errors appeared predominantly in middle letters, whereas the errors in numbers occurred mainly in final (rightmost) digits. Migrations in numbers occurred almost exclusively in adjacent digits, but in words migrations occurred both in adjacent and in nonadjacent letters. The results thus indicate that words can be selectively impaired, without a parallel impairment in numbers, and that even when numbers are also impaired they show different error pattern. Thus, the visual analyzer is actually an orthographic visual analyzer, a module that is domain-specific for the analysis of words.

Letter position dyslexia (LPD) is a peripheral dyslexia that causes errors of letter order within words. So far, only cases of acquired LPD have been reported. This study presents selective LPD in its developmental form, via the testing of II Hebrew-speaking individuals with developmental dyslexia. The study explores the types of errors and effects on reading in this dyslexia, using a variety of tests: reading aloud, lexical decision, same-different decision, definition and letter naming. The findings indicate that individuals with developmental LPD have a deficit in the letter position encoding function of the orthographic visual analyser, which leads to underspecification of letter position within words. Letter position errors occur mainly in adjacent middle letters, when the error creates another existing word. The participants did not show an output deficit or phonemic awareness deficit. The selectivity of the deficit, causing letter position errors but no letter identity errors and no migrations between words, supports the existence of letter position encoding function as separate from letter identification and letter-to-word binding.