We propose and test a theoretical perspective in which a universal hallmark of successful literacy acquisition is the convergence of the speech and orthographic processing systems onto a common network of neural structures, regardless of how spoken words are represented orthographically in a writing system. During functional MRI, skilled adult readers of four distinct and highly contrasting languages, Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Chinese, performed an identical semantic categorization task to spoken and written words. Results from three complementary analytic approaches demonstrate limited language variation, with speech-print convergence emerging as a common brain signature of reading proficiency across the wide spectrum of selected languages, whether their writing system is alphabetic or logographic, whether it is opaque or transparent, and regardless of the phonological and morphological structure it represents.

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Repetition priming refers to the facilitation in the visual identification of a stimulus produced by a recent encounter with that stimulus. In the paradigm used here, subjects performed a naming task in which a sequence of primes was presented; then they performed a tachistoscopic identification task in which the stimuli that were presented varied in their similarity to the primes. The results indicated that repetition priming facilitated the identification of repeated words and pronounceable nonwords that were similar, but not identical, to the recently encountered primes. Moreover, the number of presentations of the primes influenced the amount of facilitation for repeated words but, in contrast to previous findings, had no effect on the amount of facilitation for repeated nonwords or similar words and nonwords. The results are interpreted within a connectionist model of visual word identification.

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Statistical views of literacy development maintain that proficient reading requires the assimilation of myriad statistical regularities present in the writing system. Indeed, previous studies have tied statistical learning (SL) abilities to reading skills, establishing the existence of a link between the two. However, some issues are currently left unanswered, including questions regarding the underlying bases for these associations as well as the types of statistical regularities actually assimilated by developing readers. Here we present an alternative approach to study the role of SL in literacy development, focusing on individual differences among beginning readers. Instead of using an artificial task to estimate SL abilities, our approach identifies individual differences in children's reliance on statistical regularities as reflected by actual reading behavior. We specifically focus on individuals' reliance on regularities in the mapping between print and speech versus associations between print and meaning in a word naming task. We present data from 399 children, showing that those whose oral naming performance is impacted more by print-speech regularities and less by associations between print and meaning have better reading skills. These findings suggest that a key route by which SL mechanisms impact developing reading abilities is

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