According to Sasanuma (1987), surface dyslexia in Japanese patients who used to read aloud non-lexical words written in Kana characters but never Kanji words, corresponds to surface dyslexic patients in English-speaking areas. We analyzed six patients showing these symptoms based on a cognitive model (Ellis and Young, 1988). Consequently, we classified the symptoms into three types : (1) semantic system is more impaired ; (2) visual input lexicon is more impaired ; (3) speech output lexicon is more impaired. Furthermore, in their prognosis we found that the locus of impairment shifted from the semantic system to the visual input lexicon or to the speech output lexicon. One case showed a shift in locus of impairment from visual input lexicon to speech output lexicon following recovery of the semantic system.

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