Discrimination of reversible mirrored letters (e.g., d and b) poses a challenge when learning to read as it requires overcoming "mirror invariance," an evolutionary-old perceptual tendency of processing mirror images as equivalent. The present study investigated "when," in reading development, mirror-image discrimination…

The majority of research examining early auditory-semantic processing and organization is based on studies of meaningful relations between words and referents. However, a thorough investigation into the fundamental relation between acoustic signals and meaning requires an understanding of how meaning is associated with both lexical and non-lexical…

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision…

The present study investigated whether morphological processing in reading is influenced by the orthographic consistency of a language or its morphological complexity. Developing readers in Grade 3 and skilled adult readers participated in a reading aloud task in four alphabetic orthographies (English, French, German, Italian), which differ in…

The "automatic letter-sound integration hypothesis" (Blomert, [Blomert, L., 2011]) proposes that dyslexia results from a failure to fully integrate letters and speech sounds into automated audio-visual objects. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of English-speaking children with dyslexic difficulties (N = 13) and samples of…

Visual-attentional theories of dyslexia predict deficits for dyslexic children not only for the perception of letter strings but also for non-alphanumeric symbol strings. This prediction was tested in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm with letters, digits, and symbols. Children with dyslexia showed significant deficits for letter and digit…