Sensory roles in reading skills: The print-to-speech model

Abstract

Sensory roles in reading skills: The print-to-speech model While it is easy to recognise the necessary role that vision plays in reading, it is important to know that many other senses contribute to the acquisition, refinement and maintenance of reading skills including sound, touch and motor coordination, to name just a few. Oral language is ubiquitous across cultures throughout human history. However, this is not the case for written language, which is, in an evolutionary sense, relatively new. As such, the human brain does not have a dedicated “reading system” and relies instead upon established neural networks and circuitry to build and refine the skills required for reading and writing (see (1) for a discussion of the neuronal recycling hypothesis for arithmetic and reading).