Surface Dyslexia

A subtype of dyslexia characterized by difficulty with whole-word recognition and irregular word reading, often resulting in confusion with homophonic or pseudo-homophonic words (such as "weather" and "whether"). People with surface dyslexia can typically sound out words using phonetic rules but struggle with words that do not follow standard pronunciation patterns. This subtype contrasts with phonological dyslexia, where the difficulty lies in sound-based decoding. Understanding dyslexia subtypes is important for designing targeted reading support technologies.