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Purpose: For non-autistic children, it is well established that linguistic awareness skills support their success with reading and spelling. Few investigations have examined whether these same linguistic awareness skills play a role in literacy development for autistic elementary school-age children. This study serves as a first step in quantifying the phonological, prosodic, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills of autistic children; how these skills compare to those of non-autistic children; and their relation to literacy performance., Method: We measured and compared the phonological, prosodic, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills of 18 autistic (with average nonverbal IQs) and 18 non-autistic elementary school-age children, matched in age, nonverbal IQ, and real-word reading. The relations between linguistic awareness and the children's word-level literacy and reading comprehension skills were examined, and we explored whether the magnitude of these relations was different for the two groups. Regression analyses indicated the relative contribution of linguistic awareness variables to performance on the literacy measures for the autistic children., Results: The non-autistic children outperformed the autistic children on most linguistic awareness measures. There were moderate-to-strong relations between performances on the linguistic awareness and literacy measures for the non-autistic children, and most associations were not reliably different from those for the autistic children. Regression analyses indicate that the performance on specific linguistic awareness variables explains unique variance in autistic children's literacy performance., Conclusion: Although less developed than those of their non-autistic peers, the linguistic awareness skills of autistic elementary school-age children are important for successful reading and spelling.

Purpose: Does suppression of mirror-invariance in one script generalize to a subsequently learned script?, Method: We examined mirror invariance in writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptal children and adults (n = 181) learning the Hebrew print script (for reading), and among a subset (n = 92) also learning the Hebrew cursive script (for writing). Hebrew-Latin biscriptal Israeli adults (n = 17) provided comparison., Results: For the most part, mirror invariance was more evident in Hebrew print than in Latin in both writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptals. The number of previously acquired scripts had no effect. Letters' text-frequency inversely affected written mirror-error frequency. Written reversal errors were less frequent in cursive; orientation recognition was more fluent in print., Conclusions: Mirror-invariance suppression in one's native script does not generalize to a subsequently acquired script. Factors affecting mirror-invariance suppression in the subsequent script include its form and function and individual letters' text-frequency., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier GmbH.)

Background: As a group, autistic children with high support needs (with adaptive functioning in the range of an intellectual disability) are at risk of significant literacy difficulties. We investigated the parent-reported home literacy environment of this group of children., Method: Sixty-two parents of autistic children (4.5 to 18.25 years) attending an autism-specific school completed a home literacy survey reporting on their child's: (1) alphabet knowledge, (2) interest in reading, (3) activities/interactions around books, (4) reading ability, and (5) writing ability., Results: We found significant positive correlations between parent-reported child interest in reading and literacy-related interactions and skills, but not with child age. Children using spoken words to communicate obtained significantly greater scores on four home-literacy subscales, but not on reading interest., Conclusions: A better understanding of the home literacy activities of autistic children with high-support needs is needed to inform educational practices aimed at promoting literacy development in this vulnerable population., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Twice-exceptionality is characterized as the presence of high performance concomitantly with deficiencies or incompatible conditions. An example is when giftedness manifest associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. This study is a clinical case report referring to the evaluative and interventional process of a 9- year-old child with the paradoxical combination of giftedness associated with dyslexia. It aims to compare the performance in phonological processing, reading and writing before and after phonological remediation. In the first assessment, the child demonstrated alphabetic level in reading, a transition phase between syllabic-alphabetic and alphabetical writing levels, and below-expected performance in phonological processing skills. After intervention, the results showed consistent improvements in phonological processing, the consolidation of alphabetical writing and orthographic reading level. In general, children with isolated dyslexia have persistent difficulties in several skills after intervention. The evolution shown after phonological remediation, especially at reading level, shows different characteristics than expected. Thus, it can be concluded that twice-exceptionality may have favored the overcoming of some of the shown difficulties more successfully. Studies on these combined conditions can contribute to a better understanding of this framework during the development of learning and to formulate specialized interventions.

It is widely acknowledged that opaque orthographies place additional demands on learning, often requiring many years to fully acquire. It is less widely recognized, however, that such opacity may offer certain benefits in the context of reading. For example, heterographic homophones such as ⟨knight⟩ and ⟨night⟩ (words that sound the same but which are spelled differently) impose additional costs in learning but reduce ambiguity in reading. Here, we consider the possibility that-left to evolve freely-writing systems will sometimes choose to forego some simplicity for the sake of informativeness when there is functional pressure to do so. We investigate this hypothesis by simulating the evolution of orthography as it is transmitted from one generation to the next, both with and without a communicative pressure for ambiguity avoidance. In addition, we consider two mechanisms by which informative heterography might be selected for: differentiation, in which new spellings are created to differentiate meaning (e.g., ⟨lite⟩ vs. ⟨light⟩), and conservation, in which heterography arises as a byproduct of sound change (e.g., ⟨meat⟩ vs. ⟨meet⟩). Under pressure from learning alone, orthographic systems become transparent, but when combined with communicative pressure, they tend to favor some additional informativeness. Nevertheless, our findings also suggest that, in the long term, simpler, transparent spellings may be preferred in the absence of top-down explicit teaching., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), prevention, identification, assessment, and intervention of children who are learning to read and write are within the scope of practice for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Furthermore, for SLPs who work in the school setting, it is not uncommon to have struggling readers and poor spellers on their caseloads. Importantly, for students who have difficulty in spelling, their spelling errors are among the early indicators of dyslexia and can provide a means for identifying readers who may benefit from early intervention. SLPs can both assess spelling skills and implement evidence-based spelling and literacy diagnosis and instruction. Spelling instruction in kindergarten through the high school grades that is heavily grounded in metalinguistic activities can provide access to mental representations of word spellings, pronunciations, and meanings; links between whole-word and phonics approaches to reading instruction; and a foundation for reading fluency and comprehension., Conclusions: Learning to spell is essential for learning to read. Accordingly, this tutorial aims to elucidate how to (a) assess and identify phases of spelling development and (b) teach spelling to facilitate reading through a listening-first approach.

One difference among writing systems is how orthographic cues are used to demarcate words; although most alphabetic scripts use inter-word spaces, some Asian scripts do not explicitly mark word boundaries (e.g., Chinese). It is unclear whether these differences are arbitrary or whether they are designed to maximize reading efficiency. Here, we show that spaces inserted between words in non-demarcated scripts provide less information about word boundaries than spaces in demarcated scripts. Furthermore, despite the fact that less information is contained by inter-word spaces than characters/letters of the same size, the information content of inter-word spaces in demarcated scripts is closer to that of characters/letters compared to the information content of inter-word spaces that are inserted in non-demarcated scripts. These results suggest that the conventions used to demarcate word boundaries are sufficient to support efficient reading. Our findings provide new insights into the universals and variation across writing systems and shed light on the mental processes that support skilled reading., (© 2024 The New York Academy of Sciences.)

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the development of spelling in a large sample (N = 503, boys: N = 219) of Greek-speaking children with (N = 41) and without (N = 462) reading difficulties. Children were initially tested in Grades 2-4 and then at five consecutive measurement points over a 3-year period, focusing on how initial reading ability, grade, and gender may moderate the rate of spelling growth. Individual growth curve modeling revealed continuous growth of spelling performance in the total sample, although the growth rate decreased over time for children first tested in Grades 3-4. Spelling growth rate was also significantly slower among children with reading difficulties between Grades 2-4 and 3-5. The two reading groups displayed similar growth rates between Grades 4 and 6. Spelling growth rates did not vary significantly with gender. Overall, our study highlights the persistence of spelling difficulties even after 6 years of systematic teaching in children with reading difficulties. The severe and persistent spelling deficits of Greek-speaking children with reading difficulties may be attributed to the rich morphological system of the Greek language, the intermediate Greek orthographic transparency (in the direction of writing), and their limited experience with print., (© 2024. Crown.)

Over 30,000 field experiments with The Washington Post and Upworthy showed that readers prefer simpler headlines (e.g., more common words and more readable writing) over more complex ones. A follow-up mechanism experiment showed that readers from the general public paid more attention to, and processed more deeply, the simpler headlines compared to the complex headlines. That is, a signal detection study suggested readers were guided by a simpler-writing heuristic, such that they skipped over relatively complex headlines to focus their attention on the simpler headlines. Notably, a sample of professional writers, including journalists, did not show this pattern, suggesting that those writing the news may read it differently from those consuming it. Simplifying writing can help news outlets compete in the competitive online attention economy, and simple language can make news more approachable to online readers.

Background: Stroke profoundly affects quality of life (QOL), including loss of employment, reduced social activity, shrinking social networks and low mood. Dysgraphia (impaired writing) is a common symptom of aphasia yet is rarely targeted in rehabilitation. Recent technological advances might challenge this, since much communication is now conducted digitally through writing. The rehabilitation of writing may therefore help to address the wider consequences of stroke and aphasia., Aims: Can assistive technology (AT) training for people with dysgraphia: (1) improve written output, and are gains achieved only with AT? (2) improve reading comprehension scores, and are gains achieved only with AT? and (3) affect social participation, mood or QOL METHODS AND PROCEDURES: DESIGN: A mixed-methods, repeated measures, small group study design was adopted (qualitative outcomes will be reported elsewhere)., Participants: Recruited from community settings, for example, Stroke Association communication support groups., Inclusion Criteria: over 18 years old, aphasia due to stroke, acquired dysgraphia, writing more impaired than speech, fluent English prior to stroke, access to computer and Internet., Exclusion Criteria: currently receiving speech and language therapy, significant cognitive impairment, neuromuscular/motor-speech impairments/structural abnormalities, developmental dyslexia, uncorrected visual/auditory impairments., Procedures: Screening and diagnostic assessments at time T1 (first baseline). Outcome measures at T1; repeated at T2 (second baseline), T3 (end of intervention), T4 (3-month follow up). Social participation assessment and cognitive monitoring at T2, T3, T4., Intervention: Seven-ten hours individual therapy weekly and additional email support. Participants were trained to operate Dragon NaturallySpeaking (speech to text package) and ClaroRead (read writing aloud). Outcome measures were administered on pen and paper (control) and on computer, with AT enabled only at T3, T4., Outcomes and Results: Computer narrative writing was significantly improved by AT training (Friedman's χ 2 (3) = 8.27, p = 0.041), indicating a compensatory effect of AT. Though reading comprehension significantly improved in the computer condition (Friedman's χ 2 (3) = 21.07, p = 0.001), gains could not be attributed to the AT. Gains were achieved only when measures were administered on the keyboard, with AT enabled. Thus, a compensatory rather than remediatory effect was suggested. Social network size significantly increased; there were no significant changes in mood/QOL. Individual success rates varied., Conclusion and Implications: The customisable AT training was acceptable to participants and resulted in significantly improved narrative writing. Compensatory AT interventions are a useful adjunct to remediatory writing interventions and may particularly support functional writing., What This Paper Adds: What is already known on this subject Writing is rarely spared in aphasia and may present as the most impaired communication modality. Yet, people with aphasia report that writing is seldom included in their rehabilitation. Many communication activities are now conducted digitally through writing, therefore rehabilitation of this is more important than ever before. This study sought to address whether an assistive technology (AT) software package can improve writing and whether any changes were compensatory or remediatory. What this study adds to existing knowledge This group study found that AT training led to gains in written discourse and social network in people with aphasia and dysgraphia. Gains were not replicated in handwritten tasks, suggesting this was a compensatory therapeutic approach. What are the clinical implications of this work? AT programs such as this may present speech and language therapists with a practical, pragmatic adjunct to writing or typing therapy, particularly for clients with chronic, intractable impairments for whom remediatory therapy may have a low chance of success., (© 2023 The Authors. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.)

Purpose: Braille use has been linked to higher rates of employment, education, financial self-sufficiency, and self-esteem. One area of the world particularly impacted by braille illiteracy is the Philippines. In 2016, Digital Learning for Development and All Children Reading released a "Grand Challenge for Development" that challenged researchers to address the need for assistive technologies to help children with sensory disabilities learn to read in the Philippines. The purpose of this research was to identify technical specifications, and then co-design and test a device that could be used both in developed and developing countries, specifically Canada and the Philippines., Methods: An iterative, co-design process was undertaken to develop a prototypical device, BrailleBunny. The extent to which the device fulfilled the design criteria and directions for future development were determined through a series of case studies with 25 end-users., Results: The prototypical device requires improvement in financial accessibility, durability and reliability. All other criteria were met., Conclusions: Despite identified areas for improvement, the user feedback was positive, with the majority of users identifying that this device could provide transferrable learning to standard-size braille. With improvements, BrailleBunny, could be a valuable tool to increase the uptake of learning braille in the Philippines.

Background: Empathic concern and perspective-taking may contribute to avoiding stigmatization of adverse health behavior. Narrative writing has been shown to be effective in promoting perspective-taking and empathy. But since narrative writing is time consuming, we tested in the present study narrative reading as an alternative, more parsimonious approach., Methods: In a randomized controlled experiment, we compared writing a narrative text about a fictitious person who displays disapproved of health behavior to reading such a text and to a control condition in which participants wrote about an unrelated topic. With a sample of n = 194 participants, we investigated the impact of writing and reading a narrative text on promoting empathic concern and perspective-taking as well as on attitude change., Results: We found that both writing and reading a narrative text about the fictitious character increased empathic concern, F (1, 191) = 32.85, p < 0.001, part. η 2 = 0.15, and perspective-taking, F (1, 191) = 0.12, more strongly than writing about an unrelated topic. Writing and reading a narrative text also resulted in a more positive attitude toward this person, p < 0.001, part. η 2 = 0.12, more strongly than writing about an unrelated topic. Writing and reading a narrative text also resulted in a more positive attitude toward this person, F = 0.08. Simply reading a narrative text was equally efficient as narrative writing with respect to empathic concern, (1, 191) = 17.63, p < 0.001, part. η 2 = 0.08. Simply reading a narrative text was equally efficient as narrative writing with respect to empathic concern, p = 0.581, perspective-taking, p = 0.629, and attitude, p = 0.197., Conclusion: The finding that narrative reading is as effective as narrative writing suggests that the readers appear to be able to comprehend and engage with the story being told. When narrative reading is as effective as narrative writing, it can succeed with reduced effort in increasing empathic concern, perspective-taking, and attitude. We discuss the benefits of this approach for reducing stigmatization of adverse health behavior., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Bientzle, Eggeling and Kimmerle.)

Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate teachers' use and perceptions of digital technology to promote learning and participation for all young students in early reading and writing education in inclusive primary schools., Methods: Primary school teachers [ N  = 289] in Sweden were asked to complete a survey about digital technology in reading and writing education. The data were analysed statistically and with summative content analysis., Results: The results showed that 82% of the teachers were interested in teaching young students to read and write using digital technology. More than 50% of the teachers included digital technology to promote students' learning of phonological awareness, decoding skills, vocabulary, spelling, or text editing every week, and 74% used digital technology to support students with special needs every week. Those who perceived digital technology as a facilitator of all students' participation in early reading and writing education also reported that they used digital technology to promote different reading and writing skills more frequently. Their perceived knowledge of managing digital technology was also positively related to their perception of digital technology as a facilitator of students' participation in reading and writing education.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONTeachers who are positive about digital technology perceive such technology as beneficial for all students in reading and writing education, also for those students who have special needs.Teachers use digital technology to compensate students with special needs in reading and writing. However, there is an unawareness of the advantages of using digital technology in inclusive education.

We review a body of literature related to the drawing and recognition of geometrical two-dimensional linear drawings including letters. Handwritten letters are viewed not as two-dimensional geometrical objects but as one-dimensional trajectories of the tip of the implement. Handwritten letters are viewed as composed of a small set of kinematic primitives. Recognition of objects is mediated by processes of their creation (actual or imagined)-the imitation principle, a particular example of action-perception coupling. The concept of spatial directional field guiding the trajectories is introduced and linked to neuronal population vectors. Further, we link the kinematic description to the theory of control with spatial referent coordinates. This framework allows interpreting a number of experimental observations and clinical cases of agnosia. It also allows formulating predictions for new experimental studies of writing.

Background: Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to measure neural correlates of cognitive and social development in children for decades. It is essential to evaluate the relationship between EEG parameters and cognitive measures to understand the mechanisms of learning problems better. Methods and procedure: Fifty school-going children with complaints of learning problems were studied. EEG and other cognitive measures were used to assess children before and after PEABLS; a cognitive-behavioral intervention was imparted. EEG was recorded while hyperventilation, writing, and reading conditions, and the values for absolute and relative powers were calculated. Results: The results suggested that the post-intervention absolute (in the theta and alpha bands) and relative (delta, theta, and alpha) power values were higher, and the relative power beta value was significantly lower at most of the electrodes in comparison to pre-intervention EEG measures. A significant high positive correlation in the children with learning problems between the relative power of alpha, beta O1O2, the relative power of theta, delta T3T4, and the academic scores, IQ, working memory, DTLD, and BGT values. Conclusion: These quantitative electroencephalogram findings in children with learning problems are related to cognitive measures. The findings could be due to brain immaturity and lack of learning opportunities., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Vocabulary knowledge greatly affects writing performance (Stæhr in Lang Learn J 36:139-152, 2008; Johnson in Tesol J 7:700-715 2016), but little is known about the relative contribution of different dimensions of vocabulary knowledge to reading-to-write performance. The current study attempted to investigates the contribution of receptive/orthographic (RecOrth) vocabulary knowledge, productive/orthographic knowledge (ProOrth), productive/phonological (ProPhon) vocabulary knowledge and depth of vocabulary knowledge to reading-to-write scores. For this purpose, 154 Chinese English as foreign language (EFL) learners took a battery of vocabulary knowledge tests and a reading-to-write test. The extent to which vocabulary at different word frequencies predicted reading-to-write was also investigated. The results of regression indicated that ProOrth academic level, vocabulary depth, and RecOrth 2, 000 frequency level explained 40.2% of the reading-to-write score variance. Among the high-performing group, ProOrth academic and vocabulary depth were predictive of the reading-to-write score, while only ProOrth academic vocabulary explained the variance in the reading-to-write score for the low-performing group. The findings reveal the important relationship among dimensions of vocabulary knowledge and reading-to-write and stress the need for systematic vocabulary instruction., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Background: In Southern Italy and, specifically, in the region of Campania, many surveys show that the average of students with reading difficulties is much higher than in northern Italy and abroad. On the other hand, specific learning disorders (SLDs) in Campania are much less certified. Since there are no etiological reasons that can explain this apparent inconsistency, an objective of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate the extent of reading/writing difficulties in students from a province of Campania and then to assess the ability of teachers to identify such difficulties in their students., Methods: Of a total of 241 enrolled students, 155 (64.31%), including 73 from primary school and 82 from secondary school, belonging to 5 schools in the province of Salerno (Italy), took part in the survey. Students' reading and writing skills were assessed through standardized tests. The tests results were then compared with teacher judgments and context-related variables., Results: At the reading test, 28.7% of primary school and 13.4% of lower secondary school students fell below the 5th percentile for age. Results of the writing test were even more significant: almost half of the students of both levels of education performed below the 5th percentile. Teacher judgments showed higher agreement with standardized assessments in primary (88%, K of Cohen=0.68) than in secondary school (78%, K=0.23)., Conclusions: Reading and writing difficulties were common in our sample. While reading skills tended to improve with age, writing difficulties apparently persisted to some extent in third and sixth-grade classes. The accuracy of teacher judgments on reading skills is relatively high, but teachers seem to hardly report reading difficulties "requiring attention." Although less "severe" than others, such difficulties should be considered, mainly because of their potential developmental trajectories.

In three grammatical decision experiments, we examined the impact of alternating letter case on sentence reading to determine the locus of case-alternation effects. Experiments 1 and 2 compared grammatical decision responses ("Is this a grammatically correct sequence of words or not?") in three different conditions: (1) SAME CASE/same case; (2) alternating CASE between WORDS; and (3) aLterNaTing cAsE wItHin WoRdS. For the grammatically correct sequences, we observed significantly faster responses in the same-case conditions compared with the between-word case manipulation, as well as a significant advantage for the between-word condition compared with within-word alternating case. These results confirm that case-alternation deteriorates sentence reading, but more so at the level of single word processing (within-word alternation) than at the sentence level (between-word alternation). Experiment 3 demonstrated that between-word case-alternation facilitates sentence processing compared with an all-lowercase condition when betweenWORDspacesAREremoved. Therefore, in the absence of between-word spacing, case changes across words facilitate sentence processing, possibly by guiding readers' eyes to optimal locations for word identification.

The purpose of this meta-analytic review is to investigate the relation between statistical learning (SL) and language-related outcomes, and between SL and reading-related outcomes. A comprehensive search of peer-reviewed published research resulted in 42 articles with 53 independent samples and 201 reported effect sizes (Pearson's r ). Results of our robust variance estimation correlated effects model revealed a significant, moderate relation between SL and language-related outcomes, r = .236, p < .001, and a significant, moderate relation between SL and reading-related outcomes, r = .239, p < .001. Moreover, age, the writing system of the language, and SL paradigm moderate the strength of the association between SL and reading. Age is the only significant moderator on the strength of the association between SL and language. The findings from this meta-analysis shed light on the contribution of multiple factors that impact how SL relates to language and reading outcomes, with important implications for developing effective instructional practices that emphasize statistical regularities of oral and written materials in the classroom. Theoretical implications of these findings for language and reading development are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

This study explores the idea of the two levels of orthographic knowledge, i.e. lexical and sublexical; in particular, how these levels are affected in the case of the Indian language Malayalam that went through a script reform in 1971. Through reading and writings tasks, we compare the performance of elderly participants who gained literacy in the traditional script (with complex ligatures), with younger participants who gained literacy in the reformed script (with simpler glyphs). Both the groups read text faster in reformed script indicating script simplification was beneficial. While writing, the elderly participants largely employed the traditional script and younger ones used the reformed script. The study provides proof from non-European alphabet that orthographic knowledge indeed has two independent but related levels. Although a change in script affects both the levels, sublexical one seems more resistant to change, possibly due to less opportunities to update it., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Nambiar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objective: Innovative teaching strategies such as case-based learning and hands-on training are more and more integrated into undergraduate veterinary teaching. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that lectures still play an important role in many vet schools. Nowadays, however, lectures are questioned to be motivating and engaging enough for a long-lasting learning retention. In this context, we compared acceptance and learning outcome of the teaching methods reading, writing, and listening to a presentation., Material and Methods: In structured settings based on a cross-over design, 151 students in their fifth year attending a 2-weeks clinical rotation at the Clinic for Animal Reproduction were asked to read papers, listen to a presentation by a lecturer, and to write a summary in group work. Each task dealt with 1 of 3 topics from the field of animal reproduction. A week later, the students were asked to complete a multiple-choice test and an evaluation form. The test contained questions about each of the covered topics as well as a fourth topic, which was not taught in context of this project to assess the students' prior knowledge., Results: The results revealed that writing a summary in group work led to the best learning outcome, but it cannot be ruled out that learning success may have depended to a large extent on group work. Furthermore, the results did not differ significantly from the second-best teaching method listening to a presentation. The teaching method students preferred most was the lecture, followed by reading papers and writing a summary., Conclusions: We conclude that presentations by lecturers are still an important teaching method but can be complemented by writing tasks, which may be used in specific settings as a possible way to improve learning outcome in veterinary education., Conclusion for Practice: Our project supports the assumption that more active, student-centered learning approaches such as writing summaries can lead to more engagement and a better learning retention. In addition, training writing skills is important because clinical reports and other written communication are relevant parts of daily veterinary routine., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.The authors gratefully thank the participants of the study. In addition, we thank the staff of the Clinic for Animal Reproduction as well as the students attending the clinical rotation in 2014 who discussed this project with us and helped to develop the teaching material and the evaluation forms., (Thieme. All rights reserved.)

Discussions on the contribution of motor skills and processes to learning to read has a long history. Previous work is essentially divided into two separate strands, namely the contributions of fine motor skills (FMS) to reading and the influence of writing versus typing. In the current 2 × 2 × 3 mixed, single-blind, and randomly assigned experiment, we tested both strands together. A total of 87 children learned to decode pseudowords in either typing or writing conditions in which their FMS were either impaired or not. Decoding gains were measured at pretest, posttest, and follow-up, with FMS and working memory included as participant variable predictors. Findings indicated that FMS and working memory predicted decoding gains. Importantly, children performed best when typing if in the impaired FMS condition. Results have implications for motor representation theories of writing and for instruction of children with FMS impairments., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Writing proficiency facilitates higher achievement in educational and professional endeavors, yet most students fail to meet national writing benchmarks by the end of high school. Attentional control and overall reading skill are documented to result in better writing quality; however, most research on these relationships has focused on early elementary students (K-3rd grade. This project evaluated the relationship between attentional control, hyperactivity-impulsivity, word reading, and reading comprehension to overall writing performance on a high-stakes writing test. Participants included 266 fourth-grade struggling readers who completed the Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal Behavior (SWAN; Swanson et al., 2001, 2012) for attentional control and hyperactivity-impulsivity, the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III; Woodcock et al., 2001) Letter-Word Identification test for word reading, the WJ-III Passage Comprehension test for reading comprehension, and the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) writing test for overall writing. Hyperactivity-impulsivity was not related to word reading (β = 0.02, p > .05), reading comprehension (β = 0.06, p > .05), or writing (β = 0.14, p > .05), whereas attentional control (β = 0.51, p < .01) and reading comprehension (β = 0.55, p < .001) contributed to overall writing. Reading comprehension (β = 0.55, p < .01) had a greater impact on writing than word reading (β = 0.13, p > .05), which suggests that as academic rigor increases in the upper elementary school grades (4th grade and higher), basic skills are less predictive of success on complex tasks such as writing. Implications for increasing writing proficiency through research and practice are discussed., (Copyright © 2023 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We argue that the educational and psychological sciences must embrace the diversity of reading rather than chase the phantom of normal reading behavior. We critically discuss the research practice of asking participants in experiments to read "normally." We then draw attention to the large cross-cultural and linguistic diversity around the world and consider the enormous diversity of reading situations and goals. Finally, we observe that people bring a huge diversity of brains and experiences to the reading task. This leads to four implications: First, there are important lessons for how to conduct psycholinguistic experiments; second, we need to move beyond Anglocentric reading research and produce models of reading that reflect the large cross-cultural diversity of languages and types of writing systems; third, we must acknowledge that there are multiple ways of reading and reasons for reading, and none of them is normal or better or a "gold standard"; and fourth, we must stop stigmatizing individuals who read differently and for different reasons, and there should be increased focus on teaching the ability to extract information relevant to the person's goals. What is important is not how well people decode written language and how fast people read but what people comprehend given their own stated goals.

We recorded the eye movements of adults reading aloud short (four digit) and long (eight to 11 digit) Arabic numerals compared to matched-in-length words and pseudowords. We presented each item in isolation, at the center of the screen. Participants read each item aloud at their pace, and then pressed the spacebar to display the next item. Reading accuracy was 99 %. Results showed that adults make 2.5 times more fixations when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 7 times more fixations when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Similarly, adults make 3 times more saccades when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 9 times more saccades when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Fixation duration and saccade amplitude stay almost the same when reading short numerals with respect to short words. However, fixation duration increases by ∼50 ms when reading long numerals (∼300 ms) with respect to long words (∼250 ms), and saccade amplitude decreases up to 0.83 characters when reading long numerals with respect to long words. The pattern of findings for long numerals-more and shorter saccades as well as more and longer fixations-shows the extent to which reading long Arabic numerals is a cognitively costly task. Within the phonographic writing system, this pattern of eye movements stands for the use of the sublexical print-to-sound correspondence rules. The data highlight that reading large numerals is an unautomatized activity and that Arabic numerals must be converted into their oral form by a step-by-step process even by expert readers., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Becoming literate has been argued to have a range of social, economic and psychological effects. Less examined is the extent to which repercussions of becoming literate may vary as a function of writing system variation. A salient way in which writing systems differ is in their directionality. Recent studies have claimed that directional biases in a variety of spatial domains are attributable to reading and writing direction. This claim is the focus of the present paper, which considers the scope and possible mechanisms underlying script directionality effects in spatial cognition, with particular attention to domains with real-world relevance. Three questions are addressed: (1) What are possible mediating and moderator variables relevant to script directionality effects in spatial cognition? (2) Does script directionality exert a fixed or a malleable effect? and (3) How can script directionality effects be appropriately tested? After discussing these questions in the context of specific studies, we highlight general methodological issues in this literature and provide recommendations for the design of future research., (© 2022. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Pseudowords created by transposing two letters of words (e.g., MOHTER; CHOLOCATE) are highly confusable with their base word; this is known as the transposed-letter similarity effect. In this work, we examined whether transposed-letter effects occur when words span more than one line (e.g., CHOLO- in one line and CATE in another line; note that the transposed letters L and C are in different lines). While this type of presentation is not the canonical format for reading in alphabetic languages, it is widely used in advertising, billboards, and street signs. Transposed-letter pseudowords and their replacement-letter controls were written in the standard one-line format versus a two-line format (Experiments 1-2) or a syllable-per-line format (Experiment 3). While results showed some decrease in the transposed-letter effect in the two-line and syllabic formats, the transposed-letter effect was still substantial in the accuracy of responses. These findings demonstrate that even when the letters being transposed are relatively far apart in space, the transposed-letter effect is still robust. Thus, a major component of letter position coding occurs at an abstract level., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Learning disabilities (LD) may affect a range of academic skills but are most often observed in reading. Researchers and policymakers increasingly recommend addressing reading difficulties encountered by students with LD using evidence-based practices, or interventions validated through multiple, high-quality research studies. A valuable tool in identifying evidence-based practices is the meta-analysis, which entails statistically aggregating the results obtained through primary studies. Specific methods used in meta-analyses have the potential to influence their findings, with ramifications for research and practice. This review assessed the methodological features of the systematic reviews and analytic procedures featured in meta-analyses of reading intervention studies that included students with LD written between 2000 and 2020. Identified articles ( N = 23) suggest that meta-analyses have become more prevalent and transparent over time, notwithstanding issues related to publication bias and the opacity of coding procedures. A discussion of implications follows a description of results.

N 6 -methyladenosine (m 6 A) modification has been shown to regulate RNA metabolism. Here, we investigate m 6 A dynamics during maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) in mice through multi-omic analysis. Our results show that m 6 A can be maternally inherited or de novo gained after fertilization. Interestingly, m 6 A modification on maternal mRNAs not only correlates with mRNA degradation, but also maintains the stability of a small group of mRNAs thereby promoting their translation after fertilization. We identify Ythdc1 and Ythdf2 as key m 6 A readers for mouse preimplantation development. Our study reveals a key role of m 6 A mediated RNA metabolism during MZT in mammals., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

writing is an important tactic for learning from text and the summaries provide information on students' comprehension and learning processes. We investigated the nature of the summaries produced by bilingual adolescents, and whether their summaries were related to their reading abilities in their first and second languages. In each language, we examined the performance of students identified as typically developing, poor decoders, or poor comprehenders. Participants were 246 grade 8 students enrolled in English immersion programs in China. Measures included English word reading and reading comprehension, Chinese word reading and reading comprehension, and nonverbal ability. Students' text-absent summaries of an English 254-word expository passage were analyzed for the number of themes, main ideas, important details, and unimportant details. Using latent profile analysis, participants were identified as typical readers (TR, n = 123), poor decoders (PD, n = 74), or poor comprehenders (PC, n = 49) in English, and TR (n = 129), PD (n = 74), or PC (n = 43) in Chinese, based on word reading and reading comprehension in both English and Chinese. MANCOVA results showed that after controlling for nonverbal ability, in the English-defined groups, the TR group outperformed PD and PC on themes, main ideas, and important details; in the Chinese-defined groups, the TR group outperformed PD and PC on themes, TR performed better than PC on main ideas and important details, and PD outperformed PC on main ideas. Discussion focuses on the difficulties faced by bilingual students with reading difficulties and on the potential of summary writing instruction to improve their comprehension and learning processes., (© 2022. Crown.)

The self-generation effect refers to the finding that people's memory for information tends to be better when they generate it themselves. Counterintuitively, when proofreading, this effect may make it more difficult to detect mistakes in one's own writing than in others' writing. We investigated the self-generation effect and sources of individual differences in proofreading performance in two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 failed to reveal a self-generation effect. Experiment 2 used a studying manipulation to induce overfamiliarity for self-generated text, revealing a weak but non-significant self-generation effect. Overall, word errors (i.e., wrong words) were detected less often than non-word errors (i.e., misspellings), and function word errors were detected less often than content word errors. Fluid intelligence predicted proofreading performance, whereas reading comprehension, working memory capacity, processing speed, and indicators of miserly cognitive processing did not. Students who made more text fixations and spent more time proofreading detected more errors., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Lower levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been described in individuals with reading difficulties, but the degree and the nature of such deficiencies as well as the role of nutrition are a matter of debate. The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations between PUFA blood levels, nutritional status, and reading/writing/phonological awareness performances in 42 school-age children with varying levels of reading ability. Significant correlations were found between PUFA levels (specific omega-6/omega-3 ratios), the ratio of omega-6-derived calories to the total amount of calories and reading scores. Mediation analysis showed a mediating effect of fatty acids on the association between reading speed scores and nutritional status. Moderation analysis, moreover, showed that the associations of omega-6/omega-3 ratios in the blood and Kcal omega-6/Kcal total in dietary intake were moderated by reading speed performances. Results of the mediation and moderation models confirm that the associations of dietary intake with PUFA levels in the blood vary depending on learning abilities. Reading skills appear to be sensitive to the effects of a complex set of favorable conditions related to the presence of higher omega-3 blood levels. These conditions may reflect the action of dietary as well as genetic and epigenetic mechanisms.

This paper introduces the CommonLit Ease of Readability (CLEAR) corpus, which provides unique readability scores for ~ 5000 text excerpts along with information about the excerpt's year of publishing, genre, and other metadata. The CLEAR corpus will provide researchers interested in discourse processing and reading with a resource from which to develop and test readability metrics and to model text readability. The CLEAR corpus includes a number of improvements in comparison to previous readability corpora including size, breadth of the excerpts available, which cover over 250 years of writing in two different genres, and unique readability criterion provided for each text based on teachers' ratings of text difficulty for student readers. This paper discusses the development of the corpus and presents reliability metrics for the human ratings of readability., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: Τhe present study focuses on mechanical processes of braille writing conducted by the fingers. Analyzing and attempting to understand the perceptive feedback of the fingers is in specific situations important to develop methods to minimize phonological type errors., Aim: During a braille spelling task, the authors examined the phonological errors and traced the most and the least error prone finger(s). The authors also examined if it was possible to predict the type of phonological errors in braille writing based on four independent variables relevant to braille code., Method: The error rate of twenty nine participants was estimated by normalizing the frequency of errors performed by each finger in relation to the frequency of the executed keystrokes. Additionally, a multinomial logistic regression examined the potential effect of the column of the braille cell, the dot density of the braille characters and the word length on the type of phonological errors, while a chi-square test has been performed between types of error and fingers., Results: The fingers were not equally error prone to phonological type errors. The multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that when a replacement error appeared, the odds for an omission error were significantly less in the right column as well as in short words, while the probability for an addition error was significantly less in both cell columns. In contrast, when a replacement error appeared, the participants tended to perform more omission errors in words with rare density., Conclusions: The right ring finger was the most error prone, while the right middle finger was the least error prone. The multivariate logistic regression model showed that all the independent variables, particularly the cell column, exhibited a statistically significant relation with the types of errors., Competing Interests: Declarations of interest None., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The influence of the frequency of reading and writing habits (FRWH) on cognition has been investigated by several studies in the literature. However, the implications of FRWH on executive development, intelligence, and academic achievement are not yet clear in adolescents with healthy development. The aim was to verify whether there are differences in executive functions, intelligence, and academic achievement between adolescents with high and low FRWH. Moreover, we aimed to investigate if there are differences in the parental FRWH between adolescents with high and low FRWH. The sample was composed of 47 healthy adolescents, n  = 24 with high FRWH and n  = 23 with low FRWH. Adolescents with higher FRWH had better performance on measures of vocabulary, Speech Act analysis, and Oral Narrative Discourse. Therefore, a high FRWH has a positive influence on the cognitive development of healthy adolescents, especially with regard to pragmatic language. However, adolescents with low FRWH performed better than those with a high FRWH on an automatic counting task. The interpretation of cognitive performance and academic achievement scores in neuropsychological assessment should consider the FRWH of parents and adolescents. This factor should be targeted by early stimulation interventions to help adolescents achieve the highest possible levels of global development.

In four experiments, we investigated the impact of letter case (lower case vs. UPPER CASE) on the processing of sequences of written words. Experiment 1 used the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm with postcued identification of one word in a five-word sequence. The sequence could be grammatically correct (e.g., "the boy likes his bike") or be an ungrammatical reordering of the same words (e.g., "his boy the bike likes the"). We replicated the standard sentence superiority effect (more accurate identification of target words when embedded in a grammatically correct sequence compared with ungrammatical sequences), and also found that lowercase presentation led to higher word identification accuracy, but equally so for the grammatical and ungrammatical sequences. This pattern suggests that the lowercase advantage was mostly operating at the level of individual word identification. The following three experiments used the grammatical decision task to provide an examination of letter case effects on more global sentence processing measures. All these experiments revealed a significant lowercase advantage in grammatical decisions, independently of the nature of the ungrammatical sequence (Experiments 2 and 3) and independently of whether or not the letter case manipulation was blocked (Experiment 4). The size of the effects observed in grammatical decisions again points to individual word identification as the primary locus of the lowercase advantage. We conclude that letter case mainly affects early visuo-orthographic processing and access to case-independent letter and word identities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

In this study, we compared children's and adults' ability to accurately identify target words in written minimal pairs (WMPs) with graphemically similar letters while accounting for factors such as gender, similarity of the middle letter in WMPs, mono- versus dimorphemic WMPs, number of syllable, homography, and imageability. Fifty children and fifty adults were exposed to a distractor stimulus as a pre-mask, followed by the target, and then a post-mask stimulus. Subsequently, the corresponding WMPs including the target word and its graphemically minimal contrast were presented to the participants to obtain their reaction time (RT) in accurately identifying the target word. Results demonstrated that children tend to slow down their reaction as a compensatory strategy to circumvent their less mature knowledge of graphophonic units/morphemes to achieve accuracy during word recognition. In addition, among all controlled factors, children's RT was significantly influenced by similarity of the middle letter in the WMPs. Adults' RT, however, was influenced by factors such as gender, similarity of the middle letter in WMPs, and homography., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: to analyze the perception of Speech-Therapy and Education undergraduates regarding their experiences and practices in reading and writing texts from academic discourse genres., Methods: It´s a mixed crosscut study, with data collected by the application of a semi-structured questionnaire with open and closed questions about students' relation towards reading and writing of academic texts, their difficulties in the use of these genres and how they cope with such difficulties., Results: The results show that a significant number of the students assume that they have some difficulty in reading and writing these discourse genres in academic settings, which may be an indication of gaps in working with reading and writing during previous educational levels. Some of these students even blame themselves for not effectively following the reading and writing proposals in higher education, implying that this is due to an intrinsic disorder., Conclusion: The data allow us to state that, despite the increase in the number of students in higher education, many still feel excluded from academic life, especially for not using academic discourse genres in a proficient way. It is the University responsibility, along with all actors involved in higher education, to promote actions that consider the right to education for all students.

Background: We conducted this study to investigate the prevalence of myopia among school students in Ningbo and to explore the associations between reading and writing postures and myopia., Methods: A population-based and cross-sectional study was conducted, and 3,256 school students aged 8-19 years were recruited. Each enrolled subject was assessed for uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA) using a standard logarithmic visual acuity E-chart and a non-cycloplegic autorefraction examination. Self-administered questionnaires were used to investigate myopia-related reading and writing postures and behavioral habits among school students., Results: The prevalence of myopia among primary school, middle school, and high school students was 61.49, 81.43, and 89.72%, respectively. Regarding the associations between reading and writing postures and myopia, we identified that a reading distance >33 cm is a protective factor for myopia in female students [odds ratio (OR) = 0.31, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.15-0.64], in both primary school (OR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.30-0.99) and middle school (OR = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.15-0.90)., Conclusions: A reading distance >33 cm can be used as an additional measure to prevent and control myopia. Proper postural measures for reading and writing may have educational and public health benefits., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Jiang, Shi, Gao, Guo, Zhou and Zhang.)

Examining how informal knowledge systems change after formal instruction is imperative to understanding learning processes and conceptual development and to implementing effective educational practices. We used network analyses to determine how the organization of informal knowledge about multidigit numbers in kindergartners ( N = 279; mean age = 5.76 years, SD = 0.55; 135 females) supports and is transformed by a year of in-school formal instruction. The results show that in kindergarten, piecemeal knowledge about the surface properties of reading and writing multidigit numbers and the use of base-10 units to determine large quantities are strongly associated with each other and connected in a stringlike manner to other emerging skills. After a year of instruction, each skill becomes connected to the "hub" abilities of reading and writing multidigit numbers, which also become strongly connected to more advanced knowledge of base-10 principles. These findings provide new insights into how partial knowledge provides the backbone on which explicit principles are learned.

Cross-writing system research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience has yielded important findings regarding how a writing system's structure can influence the cognitive challenges of learning to read and the neural underpinnings of literacy. The current paper reviews these differences and extends the findings to demonstrate diversity in how skilled reading is accomplished within a single writing system, English. We argue that broad clusters of behavioral and neural patterns found across writing systems can also be found within subpopulations who display atypical routes to skilled English reading, subpopulations including Chinese-English bilinguals, deaf native signers, compensated readers, and distortion-sensitive readers. The patterns of interest include a tradeoff between the degree of reliance on phonological and morphological processing for skilled reading, a shift in attentional focus from smaller to larger orthographic units, and enhanced bilaterality of neural processing during word reading. Lastly, we consider how understanding atypical routes to reading may apply to other writing systems., (© 2022 New York Academy of Sciences.)

Letters and numbers are different domains, and their differentiation increases with schooling. It has nonetheless been argued that reading alphabetic and numerical materials partly involves the same processes, even in adults. Whether individuals with dyslexia have difficulty reading and writing numbers remains to be established. This study examined this issue in a group of 30 young adults with a diagnosis of dyslexia, without any concurrent specific difficulty in processing quantities, compared with a typically developing group matched for gender, age, university attended and course of studies, and approximate calculation ability. The results showed that adults with dyslexia also have severe difficulty in reading and writing numbers. It emerged that their number reading speed correlated moderately with word reading speed. We concluded that dyslexia is specifically related with difficulties in reading and writing not only alphabetic material but also numerical material. Our findings suggest that these abilities should be considered more carefully when assessing and supporting individuals with dyslexia.

Orthographies vary in complexity (the number of multi-letter grapheme-phoneme rules describing print-to-speech regularities) and unpredictability (the number of words which cannot be read correctly, even with at-ceiling knowledge of the rules). To assess how these constructs affect reading acquisition, we used an artificial orthography learning paradigm, where participants learn to read pseudowords written in unfamiliar symbols, and subsequently read aloud novel words written in the same symbols (generalisation). In three experiments (third experiment pre-registered), we manipulated the consistency of symbol-to-sound mappings: in the first inconsistent condition, vowel pronunciation depended on the subsequent letter (condition complexity), and in the second inconsistent condition, vowel pronunciation was unpredictable from the context (condition unpredictability). Across experiments, we found that pseudowords with inconsistent mappings are more difficult to learn than pseudowords with consistent mappings only, regardless of whether the inconsistency is due to complexity or unpredictability. Numerically, participants learning orthographies containing unpredictable correspondences seem to be less likely to form rules, either for simple or for complex correspondences. We propose that rule extraction and distributional learning happens simultaneously during reading acquisition: in a mathematical model, we show that distributional learning may lead to more complete knowledge than rule extraction for orthographies that are high in unpredictability., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Francis Galton first reported that humans mentally organize numbers from left to right on a mental number line (1880). This spatial-numerical association was long considered to result from writing and reading habits. More recently though, newborns and animals showed a left-to-right oriented spatial numerical association challenging the primary role assigned to culture in determining the link between number and space. Despite growing evidence supporting the intrinsic association between number and space in different species, its adaptive value is still largely unknown. Here we tested for an advantage in identification of left versus right target positions in 3- to 6-year-old children. Children watched as a toy was hidden under one of 10 linearly arranged identical cups and were then asked to help a stuffed animal retrieve the toy. On each trial, the toy was hidden in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th cup, from the left or right. To prevent children from staring at the target cup, they were asked to pick up the stuffed animal from under their chair after witnessing the hiding of the toy and then to help the stuffed animal find the toy. Older children were more accurate than younger children. Children exhibited a serial position effect, with performance higher for more exterior targets. Remarkably, children also showed a left bias: they remembered the left targets better than the right targets. Only the youngest children were dramatically influenced by the location of the experimenter during search. Additional analyses support the hypothesis that children used a left-to-right oriented searching strategy in this spatial/ordinal task., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Before children are able to invent phonologically plausible spellings of words, they may produce strings of letters that do not seem to be motivated by the sounds in words. To examine the nature of these prephonological spellings and their relationship to later literacy performance, we administered a test in which children spelled a series of words using preformed letters, together with other literacy-related tests, to 106 U.S. 3- to 5-year-olds who had not received formal literacy instruction. We then followed the children into the first years of school, administering standardized spelling and word reading tests yearly for the subsequent 3 years. We used quantitative procedures to identify children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1. Although these children did not use phonologically plausible letters at a rate above that expected by chance, their spellings demonstrated some knowledge about common letters and digrams-graphotactic knowledge. The prephonological spellers also showed some knowledge of the alphabet and some phonological awareness, indicating that these skills do not suffice for phonological spelling. Children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1 were poorer readers and spellers at the later testing points, on average, than children who were not. This result reveals the continuity between children's early spelling attempts and their later literacy skills and the importance of phonology in spelling. We did not find, as Kessler et al. [Journal of Learning Disabilities (2013), Vol. 46, pp. 252-259] did in a study where children wrote words by hand, that better graphotactic knowledge among prephonological spellers is associated with better spelling during later years., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Developmental dyslexia is a special learning disorder which is prevalent in all languages. A central question in dyslexia is whether the neural mechanism of their defects is universal or distinct in different writing systems. Using meta-analytic approach, we created meta-images using activation abnormalities in Chinese and alphabetic children with dyslexia to find convergence and divergence under different writing systems. The results revealed that dyslexic children have a universal attention-related dysfunction with hypoactivation in the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) under different writing systems, in spite of differences of degree and spatial extent in those regions. Alphabetic dyslexic children additionally showed hypoactivation in the left occipito-temporo-parietal regions. Chinese dyslexic children showed specific hyperactivation in the right postcentral gyrus, the left rectus, and the right middle temporal gyrus. The present meta-analysis for the first time showed both shared and distinct abnormalities in children with dyslexia under Chinese and alphabetic writing systems., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Statistical views of reading highlight the link between proficient literacy and the assimilation of various regularities embedded in writing systems, including those in the mapping between print and meaning. Still, orthographic-semantic (O-S) regularities remain relatively understudied, with open questions regarding 3 issues: (a) how O-S regularities should be quantified, (b) how they impact the behavior of proficient readers, and (c) whether individual differences in sensitivity to these regularities predict reading skills. The goal of the current article is to address these questions. We start by reviewing previous studies estimating print-meaning regularities, where orthography-to-semantics consistency (OSC) is defined as the mean semantic similarity between a word and its orthographic neighbors. While we adopt this general strategy, we identify a potential confound in previous operational definitions. We therefore offer a modified measure, which we use to examine group-level OSC effects in available data sets of single word recognition and reading for comprehension. Our findings validate the existence of OSC effects but reveal variation across tasks, with OSC effects emerging more strongly in tasks involving a direct mapping of print to meaning. Next, we present a reanalysis of word naming data from 399 second through fifth graders, where we examine individual differences in reliance on O-S regularities and their relation to participants' reading skills. We show that early readers whose naming accuracy is more influenced by OSC (i.e., those who rely more on O-S) have better passage comprehension abilities. We conclude by discussing the role of O-S regularities in proficient reading and literacy acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Holistic processing has been identified as an expertise marker of face and object recognition. By contrast, reduced holistic processing is purportedly an expertise marker in recognising orthographic characters in Chinese. Does holistic processing increase or decrease in expertise development? Is orthographic recognition a domain-specific exception to all other kinds of recognition (e.g. face and objects)? In two studies, we examined the developmental trend of holistic processing in Chinese character recognition in Chinese and non-Chinese children, and its relationship with literacy abilities: Chinese first graders-with emergent Chinese literacy acquired in kindergarten-showed increased holistic processing perhaps as an inchoate expertise marker when compared with kindergartners and non-Chinese first graders; however, the holistic processing effect was reduced in higher-grade Chinese children. These results suggest a non-monotonic inverted U-shape trend of holistic processing in visual expertise development: An increase in holistic processing due to initial reading experience followed by a decrease in holistic processing due to literacy enhancement. This result marks the development of holistic and analytic processing skills, both of which can be essential for mastering visual recognition. This study is the first to investigate the developmental trend of holistic processing in Chinese character recognition using the composite paradigm., (© 2022. The Author(s).)