Neurocognitive Basis of Dyslexia in Different Writing Systems

An important issue in dyslexia research is whether developmental dyslexia in different writing systems has a common neurocognitive basis across writing systems or whether there are specific neurocognitive alterations. In this chapter, we review studies that investigate the neurocognitive basis of dyslexia in Chinese, a logographic writing system, and compare the findings of these studies with dyslexia in alphabetic writing systems. We begin with a brief review of the characteristics of the Chinese writing system because to fully understand the commonality and specificity in the neural basis of Chinese dyslexia one must understand how logographic writing systems are structured differently than alphabetic systems.