Frontiers special topic organized by Susana Araújo and Tânia Fernandes, with Urs Maurer, University of Hong Kong: Multisensory Integration as a Pathway to Neural Specialization for Print in Typical And Dyslexic Readers Across Writing Systems
The ability to decode and produce written language constitutes a major pillar for successful participation in modern technology-based societies. Efficient processing of graphs (i.e., characters of a written script which code linguistic units as phonemes or syllables; e.g., letters, aksharas) is the foundation of reading. Letter recognition ability is an essential precursor of word reading in alphabetic languages and is also an important predictor of future reading skills. However, ~5-10% of children are affected by developmental dyslexia, exhibiting anomalous letter processing and failing to acquire fluent decoding. Without adequate literacy skills, they are at risk for adverse academic, economic, and psychosocial consequences. The mechanisms by which learning audio-visual and motor-visual associations relate to (in)efficient graph recognition and reading across languages and writing systems are still open. This Research Topic aims to contribute to the understanding of these mechanisms, by providing a forum in which researchers from neurocognitive, behavioural, developmental, and educational scientific fields define the state of the art and future directions on this issue.
Keywords: Visual-orthographic system, audio-visual integration, motor-visual integration, dyslexia, training
