Connectionist Models of Reading

Humans learn to read printed words by taking in perceptual information through our visual system, computing the word’s meaning, and producing a pronunciation. This process involves knowledge of language, printed and spoken, and our knowledge of the world. The connectionist formalization of this process, known as the Triangle Framework (Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989), is an influential theory of the cognitive processes associated with reading. The theory has helped explain foundational aspects of information processing, learning, typical and atypical development, and the brain bases of reading and continues to be a guiding force in reading science today.