Paralexia is a reduction in reading ability characterized by the transposition or supplementation of

words A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its ...

syllables A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. It usually is an acquired condition associated with

brain The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

injury such as alexia or acquired

dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...

, for example, as the result of a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

. There are several types of paralexias depending on the type of reading errors: orthographic paralexias, semantic paralexias, inflectional and derivational paralexias, function word substitutions, regularization errors and orthographic-then-semantic paralexias.Alexia, Rhonda B. Friedman, Georgetown University Medical Center
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References

{{Reflist Alexia (condition) Dyslexia