ABSTRACT
In literate societies, word recognition is a crucial form of visual expertise. Work in cognitive neuroscience has identified a number of cortical areas involved in reading. Here, we review electrophysiological evidence of how literacy is associated with changes in the functioning and recruitment of occipito-temporal regions important to the early stages of word recognition, as shown by changes in the amplitude and lateralization of the posterior N1. In addition, we discuss factors that modulate the N1 lateralization (e.g., writing system, experience with a second language, or, more generally, experience with visually presented wordforms of any writing system), and present novel results from an ERP study pertaining to the relationship between bilingualism and N1 lateralization. We end our paper by discussing some new directions in the field.
