Multiple phonological access pathways and their creation: The case of number words

Abstract

Background Accumulating evidence shows that the phonological production of words follows not one but multiple pathways, separated by the word’s category (e.g. number versus non-number words).Aims We demonstrated that even the same word can follow different phonological production pathways, depending on the task context.Methods & Procedure We investigated HLI, a woman with aphasia, in several oral number-production tasks, with different input modalities.Results HLI made errors in five tasks with five different input modalities (digits, written words, general knowledge, dice patterns, dot arrays), but she performed better in other number-production tasks (oral calculation and repetition).Conclusions We conclude that there are multiple access pathways for the phonological retrieval of number words: most tasks employ a default number-production pathway, which is impaired for HLI, whereas some tasks employ dedicated phonological production pathways, which are intact. We also propose a model, whose central prediction is supported by our findings, explaining how these dedicated pathways are created for numbers and other words.