Editorial: The impact of learning to read on visual processing

Citation: Fernandes T and Kolinsky R (2015) Editorial: The impact of learning to read on visual processing. In 1892, Déjerine published the first report of pure alexia (Déjerine, 1892). Monsieur C. became unable to read in the absence of any other cognitive disorder (even writing was preserved) after a lesion of the inferior occipitotemporal cortex, a neural region dedicated to visual recognition. Although reading is an intense visual ability, the relation between reading and visual processing has often been sell short. It was only ∼100 years after the report of Monsieur C. that part of this occipitotemporal region was coined visual word-form area, VWFA (Warrington and Shallice, 1980; see also Cohen et al., 2000; Polk and Farah, 2002). Since then an emergent bulk of research has demonstrated that learning to read, not only leads to the emergence of a specialized neurocognitive circuitry, but also impacts on the evolutionary older and pre-existing neurocognitive system of visual (non-linguistic) object recognition. Many questions regarding the exact nature, locus, and consequences of this impact are in debate or still unanswered. This Research Topic was aimed at setting a landmark forum on which researchers present and discuss recent work, their proposals, and open novel questions. We have compiled nine excellent articles on the relation between visual processing and literacy acquisition, reading development, and developmental dyslexia. This research topic is organized into three parts. In the first part, opening this research topic, in an opinion article, Zhou et al. (2014) consider the relation between visual skills and learning to read, and the moderator role of the visual complexity of the written script in this equation (e.g., Chinese makes stronger demands of visual skills due to its complexity than alphabetic scripts). Qian and Bi (2014) argue that the visual complexity of the script modulates the expression of visual processing deficits (namely, in magnocellular processing) in developmental dyslexia. They examined the association between motion processing (in a coherent motion task, underpinned by V5/MT functioning) and reading (in a visual lexical decision task) in Chinese dyslexic children and chronological-age controls. Second, regarding the emergence of a neurocognitive system specialized in letter processing, in a hypothesis and theory article, Lachmann and van Leeuwen (2014) propose the functional coordination approach. According to this hypothesis learning to read captures the analytic strategy of visual processing, which was already available before literacy took place, but then becomes the preference mode in letter processing. …