Cross-cultural differences in unimpaired and dyslexic reading: Behavioural and functional anatomical observations in readers of regular and irregular orthographies

The ability to read is of enormous personal, political and economic significance, and it allows access to diverse educational and cultural resources. Reading is not acquired instinctively-it depends on teaching-but once its principles have been mastered, reading becomes effortless for the vast majority of people. Nevertheless, a sizeable minority of intelligent children have problems in learning to read and write despite adequate teaching, and for them reading never becomes effortless. These problems are caused by developmental dyslexia which differs in prevalence across different languages and writing systems.