Reading Network Research Articles

Structural Correlates of Overt Sentence Reading in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease.

Overt sentence reading in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild-tomoderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been associated with slowness of speech, characterized by a higher number of pauses, shorter speech units and slower speech rate and attributed to reduced working memory/ attention and language capacity. This preliminary case-control study investigates whether the temporal organization of speech is associated with the volume of brain regions involved in overt sentence reading and explores the discriminative ability of temporal speech parameters and standard volumetric MRI measures for the classification of MCI and AD. Individuals with MCI, mild-to-moderate AD, and healthy controls (HC) had a structural MRI scan and read aloud sentences varying in cognitive-linguistic demand (length). The association between speech features and regional brain volumes was examined by linear mixed-effect modeling. Genetic programming was used to explore the discriminative ability of temporal and MRI features. Longer sentences, slower speech rate, and a higher number of pauses and shorter interpausal units were associated with reduced volumes of the reading network. Speech-based classifiers performed similarly to the MRI-based classifiers for MCI-HC (67% vs. 68%) and slightly better for AD-HC (80% vs. 64%) and AD-MCI (82% vs. 59%). Adding the speech features to the MRI features slightly improved the performance of MRI-based classification for AD-HC and MCI-HC but not HC-MCI. The temporal organization of speech in overt sentence reading reflects underlying volume reductions. It may represent a sensitive marker for early assessment of structural changes and cognitive- linguistic deficits associated with healthy aging, MCI, and AD.

The Functional Neuroanatomy of Reading Intervention.

The present article reviews the literature on the brain mechanisms underlying reading improvements following behavioral intervention for reading disability. This includes evidence of neuroplasticity concerning functional brain activation, brain structure, and brain connectivity related to reading intervention. Consequently, the functional neuroanatomy of reading intervention is compared to the existing literature on neurocognitive models and brain abnormalities associated with reading disability. A particular focus is on the left hemisphere reading network including left occipito-temporal, temporo-parietal, and inferior frontal language regions. In addition, potential normalization/compensation mechanisms involving right hemisphere cortical regions, as well as bilateral sub-cortical and cerebellar regions are taken into account. The comparison of the brain systems associated with reading intervention and the brain systems associated with reading disability enhances our understanding of the neurobiological basis of typical and atypical reading development. All in all, however, there is a lack of sufficient evidence regarding rehabilitative brain mechanisms in reading disability, which we discuss in this review.

Sensory modality and spoken language shape reading network in blind readers of Braille.

The neural basis of reading is highly consistent across many languages and scripts. Are there alternative neural routes to reading? How does the sensory modality of symbols (tactile vs. visual) influence their neural representations? We examined these questions by comparing reading of visual print (sighted group, n= 19) and tactile Braille (congenitally blind group, n= 19). Blind and sighted readers were presented with written (words, consonant strings, non-letter shapes) and spoken stimuli (words, backward speech) that varied in word-likeness. Consistent with prior work, the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC) was active during Braille and visual reading. A posterior/anterior vOTC word-form gradient was observed only in sighted readers with more anterior regions preferring larger orthographic units (words). No such gradient was observed in blind readers. Consistent with connectivity predictions, in blind compared to sighted readers, posterior parietal cortices were recruited to a greater degree and contained word-preferring patches. Lateralization of Braille in blind readers was predicted by laterality of spoken language and reading hand. The effect of spoken language increased along a cortical hierarchy, whereas effect of reading hand waned. These results suggested that the neural basis of reading is influenced by symbol modality and spoken language and support connectivity-based views of cortical function.

ID:16040 Relations Between White Matter Tract Integrity and Change in Lexical Decision-Making Following Theta-burst Stimulation

Lexical decision making (LD) is a complex skill that is primarily facilitated by a left-lateralized reading network associated with proficient reading (1). There are two major pathways associated with the reading network: the dorsal pathway and the ventral pathway. The dorsal pathway consists of the supramarginal temporal gyrus (SMG), superior temporal gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and is associated with pseudoword reading. The ventral pathway consists of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and the IFG and is associated with word recognition (2,3,4).

ID:15819 The Effects of Theta-Burst Stimulation on Reading Fluency in Typical and Impaired Adult Readers

Adults with reading disabilities (RD) often struggle with slow and dysfluent reading throughout their life, even following behavioral intervention. Research suggests that improvement in reading speed and fluency is accompanied by critical changes in the brain’s left-lateralized reading network. This network consists of two major pathways: a dorsal pathway with a major node at the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), and a ventral pathway with a major node at the middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Theta-burst stimulation (TBS) to key nodes of the reading network (MTG and SMG) has been shown to produce behavioral changes in word reading (1,3,4).

Reading real words versus pseudowords: A meta-analysis of research in developmental dyslexia.

Word reading is critical for reading development. However, it has long been debated on the processes involved in real word and pseudoword decoding in developmental dyslexia (DD). We conducted a meta-analysis of 28 neuroimaging studies (519 participants with DD, 562 typical readers, age range 5-63 years, female 37.65%, 382 foci, 64 experimental contrasts) using effect-size signed differential mapping. Individuals with DD compared with typical readers showed hypoactivity in the left-lateralized reading network, including the occipitotemporal regions, temporoparietal regions, and inferior frontal gyri (pars triangularis and pars opercularis), in real word and pseudoword decoding. In pseudoword compared with real word decoding, hypoactivity was more severely reduced in the inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis). Metaregression showed that no hypoactivity was associated with age in real word decoding, whereas in pseudoword decoding, hypoactivity in the left superior temporal gyrus was negatively associated with age and hypoactivity in the left inferior temporal gyrus was quadratically associated with age. Accommodating the connectionist triangle model, our findings demonstrate that DD may be associated with abnormalities in both the direct orthography-phonology and the indirect orthography-semantics-phonology pathways across real word and pseudoword decoding. Compared with real word decoding, pseudoword decoding in those with DD may be more associated with abnormalities in the indirect pathway. With development, abnormalities in both pathways seem stable in real word decoding. In pseudoword decoding, abnormalities in the indirect pathway become more severe initially but could be improved in later development; abnormalities in the direct pathway could be persistently becoming more severe with age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

69-OR: Implementing Autonomous AI in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) for the Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy Improves Access to Care: A Pre–Post Comparison in the Southeastern U.S.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) and diabetic macular edema (DME) are debilitating complications of diabetes; however, patients in the most vulnerable populations often face barriers in accessing recommended ocular exams, leading to major health inequity. These barriers are especially true for FQHCs, as they serve the most under resourced and underserved populations. More recently, rigorously validated, FDA cleared, autonomous AI for the detection of DR and DME has been considered as an alternative to deployed remote reading networks. We examined the impact of autonomous AI compared to remote reading on patient access and clinical workflow efficiency, measured as number of steps by the operator. During 90 days in mid-2021, at two FQHC clinics in the southeastern US, autonomous AI was provided in place of a remote reading network. All steps were completed at the point-of-care: qualified patients with diabetes were identified in the electronic health record (EHR) , diagnosed by the autonomous AI output, provided results at time of the exam, and referred to specialists where appropriate. After 90 days, 1patients with diabetes underwent autonomous AI diagnostic testing, and 30/1patients with diabetes (28.6%) were identified by the AI as having signs of vision threatening DR or DME. Testing was accomplished with fewer steps as compared to exams completed with a remote reading network at the same clinics. We conclude that implementing autonomous AI point-of-care testing for the identification of DR and DME in an FQHC setting improved workflow efficiency and patient access compared to remote reading, demonstrating a potential to address health inequities in underserved and vulnerable populations. Disclosure J.Goldstein: Employee; Digital Diagnostics. D.Weitzman: Employee; Digital Diagnostics. M.D.Abràmoff: Advisory Panel; NovaGo Therapeutics AG, Board Member; Digital Diagnostics, Consultant; Digital Diagnostics, Speaker's Bureau; AbbVie Inc., Stock/Shareholder; Digital Diagnostics.

A Spatiotemporal Map of Reading Aloud.

Reading words aloud is a fundamental aspect of literacy. The rapid rate at which multiple distributed neural substrates are engaged in this process can only be probed via techniques with high spatiotemporal resolution. We probed this with direct intracranial recordings covering most of the left hemisphere in 46 humans (26 male, 20 female) as they read aloud regular, exception and pseudo-words. We used this to create a spatiotemporal map of word processing and to derive how broadband γ activity varies with multiple word attributes critical to reading speed: lexicality, word frequency, and orthographic neighborhood. We found that lexicality is encoded earliest in mid-fusiform (mFus) cortex, and precentral sulcus, and is represented reliably enough to allow single-trial lexicality decoding. Word frequency is first represented in mFus and later in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal sulcus (IPS), while orthographic neighborhood sensitivity resides solely in IPS. We thus isolate the neural correlates of the distributed reading network involving mFus, IFG, IPS, precentral sulcus, and motor cortex and provide direct evidence for parallel processes via the lexical route from mFus to IFG, and the sublexical route from IPS and precentral sulcus to anterior IFG.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Reading aloud depends on multiple complex cerebral computations: mapping from a written letter string on a page to a sequence of spoken sound representations. Here, we used direct intracranial recordings in a large cohort while they read aloud known and novel words, to track, across space and time, the progression of neural representations of behaviorally relevant factors that govern reading speed. We find, concordant with cognitive models of reading, that known and novel words are differentially processed through a lexical route, sensitive to frequency of occurrence of known words in natural language, and a sublexical route, performing letter-by-letter construction of novel words.

Functional neuroanatomy of English word reading in early bilingual and monolingual adults.

Skilled reading is important in daily life. While the understanding of the neurofunctional organization of this uniquely human skill has advanced significantly, it does not take into consideration the common bilingual experiences around the world. To examine the role of early bilingualism on the neural substrates supporting English word processing, we compared brain activity, as well as functional connectivity, in Spanish‐English early bilingual adults (N = 25) and English monolingual adults (N = 33) during single‐word processing. Activation analysis revealed no significant differences between the two groups. A seed‐to‐voxel analysis using eight a priori selected seed‐regions (placed in regions known to be involved in reading) revealed relatively stronger functional connectivity in bilinguals between two sets of regions: left superior temporal gyrus seed positively with left lingual gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus seed negatively with left anterior cingulate cortex. Together these results suggest that an early Spanish‐English bilingual experience does not modulate local brain activity for English word reading. It does, however, have some influence on the functional intercommunication between brain regions during reading, specifically in two regions associated with reading, which are functionally connected to those inside and outside of the reading network. We conclude that brain regions involved in processing English words are not that different in Spanish‐English early bilingual adults relative to monolingual adult users of English.

Neural representation of phonological information during Chinese character reading.

Previous studies have revealed that phonological processing of Chinese characters elicited activation in the left prefrontal cortex, bilateral parietal cortex, and occipitotemporal regions. However, it is controversial what role the left middle frontal gyrus plays in Chinese character reading, and whether the core regions (e.g., the left superior temporal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus) for phonological processing of alphabetic languages are also involved in Chinese character reading. To address these questions, the present study used both univariate and multivariate analysis (i.e., representational similarity analysis, RSA) to explore neural representations of phonological information during Chinese character reading. Participants were scanned while performing a reading aloud task. Univariate activation analysis revealed a widely distributed network for word reading, including the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, lateral temporal cortex, and occipitotemporal cortex. More importantly, RSA showed that the left prefrontal (i.e., the left middle frontal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus) and bilateral occipitotemporal areas (i.e., the left inferior and middle temporal gyrus and bilateral fusiform gyrus) represented phonological information of Chinese characters. These results confirmed the importance of the left middle frontal gyrus and regions in ventral pathway in representing phonological information of Chinese characters.

A Novel Niche Quantum Ant Colony-Based Clustering Optimization Approach for Wireless Auto Meter Reading Network

Since the low cost and high flexibility, wireless automatic meter reading network (WAMRN) is widely used by utility companies to realize automatic collection and transmission of remote energy consumption information. Considering that WAMRN is composed of several wireless communication nodes, the lifetime of the network will be affected by factors such as the changeable deployment environment and the limited energy of nodes. Thus, a novel niche quantum ant colony-based WAMRN clustering optimization method is proposed in this paper to address the problem of how to make full use of the limited energy to extend network lifetime and improve data transmission efficiency. In the proposed approach, a clustering model of WAMRN is defined; moreover, an improved Niche Quantum Ant Colony Optimization (NQACO) is proposed to optimize the model therefore to obtain an optimal clustering scheme, which can help WAMRN reduce unnecessary energy loss to achieve the purpose of extending the lifetime of the entire network. To verify the performance of the proposed method, NQACO is compared with some popular clustering methods, i.e., GA and SA, under different scenarios. The results show that under the premise of ensuring network communication, NQACO is superior to the other two methods in reducing the total energy consumption and prolonging the network lifetime.

Dissociating executive function and ADHD influences on reading ability in children with dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia (DD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders among school-age children. These disorders frequently co-occur, with up to 40–50% of children with one diagnosis meeting criteria for the other, and similar percentages of children with either DD or ADHD exhibiting impaired executive functions (EF). Although both ADHD and EF deficits are common in dyslexia, there is little evidence about how ADHD and EF deficits specifically influence the brain basis of reading difficulty in dyslexia, and whether the influences of ADHD and EF on dyslexia can be disentangled. The goal of the current study was to investigate, at both behavioral and brain levels, whether reading performance in individuals with dyslexia is more strongly associated with EF or with diagnostic status of comorbid ADHD. We examined reading abilities and EF in children (8-13 years old) with typical reading ability, DD only, or both DD + ADHD. Across both groups with dyslexia, impaired EF was associated with greater impairment on measures loading onto a reading fluency, but not a reading accuracy, factor. There were no significant differences between the DD and DD + ADHD groups on measures of reading fluency or reading accuracy. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a rhyme-matching reading task requiring phonological awareness, typically developing readers showed greater left-hemisphere reading network activation than children with DD or DD + ADHD. Children with DD and DD + ADHD did not show differential activation, but DD children with unimpaired EF showed greater activation than those with impaired EF in reading-related areas. Thus, ADHD status alone had no measurable influence on reading performance or brain activation. Impaired EF in dyslexia, independent of ADHD status, was associated with greater deficits in reading fluency and greater reductions of activation in response to print in the typical left-hemisphere reading network.

P160. Reading Intervention Alters Brain Connectivity in Autistic Children

Children who have adequate decoding abilities, but poor reading comprehension make up a specific subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study uses a randomized controlled fMRI trial to examine the impact of a visual imagery-based reading intervention on the brain’s reading network in autistic children with reading comprehension difficulties.

Reading Novels, Reading Networks: Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar, Social Media, and the Digital Literary Sphere

This article examines the theme of social networks in Mark Z. Danielewski’s serial novel The Familiar, as well as the social networks involved in the work’s reception, as a means of assessing the contemporary novel’s imbrication in social networks and social media. It contributes to critical discussions about The Familiar—and to broader conversations about the novel in the social media age—on two fronts. First, it analyzes Danielewski’s diegetic social networks. I argue that, in The Familiar, the planetary social is largely represented as a source of anxiety, as the existential threat of violence is amplified and perpetuated through social media. Yet the novel also explores how social networks offer the potential for resistance and protection from such violence. Second, the article describes how Danielewski’s real-world socially networked communities have impacted the interpretation of his writing. The analysis centers on the Facebook “Reading Club” dedicated to The Familiar and on the online discussion, conducted through WordPress, wherein students and faculty at multiple universities blogged about The Familiar, Volume 1. The WordPress discussion pushes the classroom into the blogosphere, troubling distinctions among academic interpretation, social networking, and public discourse. The Facebook group harnesses the conventions of both social media and book clubs, demonstrating how academic-adjacent interpretation may flourish in contexts not typified by such reading. At stake is a more nuanced understanding of the power and potential violence of communities constituted through social media; of the novel’s ability to represent and theorize such communities; and of the ways that reading communities’ emergence across social media has problematized longstanding conceptualizations of contemporary reading culture as characterized by a series of divisions (such as that between amateur and professional readers).

Sex differences in the intrinsic reading neural networks of Chinese children

Sex differences in reading performance have been considered a relatively stable phenomenon. However, there is no general agreement about their neural basis, which might be due to that sex differences are largely influenced by age. This paper focuses on the sex differences in the reading-related neural network of Chinese children and its interaction with age. We also attempt to predict reading abilities based on neural network. Fifty-three boys and 56 girls (8.2–14.6 years of age) were recruited. We collected their resting-state fMRI and behavioural data. Restricted sex differences were found in the resting-state reading neural network compared to extensive age by sex interaction effect. Specifically, the interactions between sex and age indicated that with increasing age, girls showed greater connectivity strength between visual orthographic areas and other brain areas within the reading network, while boys showed an opposite trend. After controlling age, the prediction models of reading performance for the girls mainly included interhemispheric connections, while the intrahemispheric connections (particularly the phonological route) mainly contributed to predicting the reading ability for boys. Taken together, these findings suggest that sex differences in reading neural networks are modulated by age. Partialling out age, boys and girls also show the stable sex differences in relationship between reading neural circuit and reading behaviour.

Cross-Sectional Investigation of Brain Volume in Dyslexia

The goal of the study was to determine whether dyslexia is associated with differences in local brain volume, and whether these local brain volume differences show cross-sectional age-effects. We investigated the local volume of gray and white brain matter with voxel-based morphometry (VBM) as well as reading performance in three age groups of dyslexic and neurotypical normal reading subjects (children, teenagers and adults). Performance data demonstrate a steady improvement of reading skills in both neurotypical as well as dyslexic readers. However, the pattern of gray matter volumes tell a different story: the children are the only group with significant differences between neurotypical and dyslexic readers in local gray matter brain volume. These differences are localized in brain areas associated with the reading network (angular, middle temporal and inferior temporal gyrus as well as the cerebellum). Yet the comparison of neurotypical and normal readers over the age groups shows that the steady increase in performance in neurotypical readers is accompanied by a steady decrease of gray matter volume, whereas the brain volumes of dyslexic readers do not show this linear correlation between brain volume and performance. This is further evidence that dyslexia is a disorder with a neuroanatomical basis in the form of a lower volume of gray matter in parts of the reading network in early dyslexic readers. The present data point out that network shaping processes in gray matter volume in the reading network does take place over age in dyslexia. Yet this neural foundation does not seem to be sufficient to allow normal reading performances even in adults with dyslexia. Thus dyslexia is a disorder with lifelong consequences, which is why consistent support for affected individuals in their educational and professional careers is of great importance. Longitudinal studies are needed to verify whether this holds as a valid pattern or whether there is evidence of greater interindividual variance in the neuroanatomy of dyslexia.

Distinctive neural correlates of phonological and reading impairment in fetal alcohol-exposed adolescents with and without facial dysmorphology

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has been linked to atypical brain and cognitive development, including poor academic performance in reading. This study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging to characterize functional and structural mechanisms mediating reading deficits in 26 adolescents with PAE-related facial dysmorphology (fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)/partial FAS (PFAS)), 29 heavily-exposed (HE) non-syndromal adolescents, in comparison with 19 typically developing controls. The FAS/PFAS and HE groups were balanced in terms of levels of PAE and reading (dis)ability. While neural alterations in the posterior association cortices were evident in both PAE groups, distinctive neural correlates of reading (dis)abilities were observed between adolescents with and without facial dysmorphology. Specifically, compared to the HE and control groups, the syndromal adolescents showed greater activation in the right precentral gyrus during phonological processing and rightward lateralization in an important reading-related tract (inferior longitudinal fasciculus, ILF), suggesting an atypical reliance on the right hemisphere. By contrast, in the HE, better reading skills were positively correlated with neural activation in the left angular gyrus and white matter organization of the left ILF, although the brain function-behavior relation was weaker than among the controls, suggesting less efficient function of the typical reading network. Our findings provide converging evidence at both the neural functional and structural levels for distinctive brain mechanisms underlying atypical reading and phonological processing in PAE adolescents with and without facial dysmorphology.

Development and evaluation of adeep learning algorithm for German word recognition from lip movements

HintergrundZahlreiche Menschen profitieren beim Lippenlesen von den zusätzlichen visuellen Informationen aus den Lippenbewegungen des Sprechenden, was jedoch sehr fehleranfällig ist. Algorithmen zum Lippenlesen mit auf künstlichen neuronalen Netzwerken basierender künstlicher Intelligenz verbessern die Worterkennung signifikant, stehen jedoch nicht für die deutsche Sprache zur Verfügung.Material und MethodenEs wurden 1806 Videos mit jeweils nur einer deutsch sprechenden Person selektiert, in Wortsegmente unterteilt und mit einer Spracherkennungssoftware Wortklassen zugeordnet. In 38.391 Videosegmenten mit 32 Sprechenden wurden 18 mehrsilbige, visuell voneinander unterscheidbare Wörter zum Trainieren und Validieren eines neuronalen Netzwerks verwendet. Die Modelle 3D Convolutional Neural Network, Gated Recurrent Units und die Kombination beider Modelle (GRUConv) wurden ebenso verglichen wie unterschiedliche Bildausschnitte und Farbräume der Videos. Die Korrektklassifikationsrate wurde jeweils innerhalb von 5000 Trainingsepochen ermittelt.ErgebnisseDer Vergleich der Farbräume ergab keine relevant unterschiedlichen Korrektklassifikationsraten im Bereich von 69 % bis 72 %. Bei Zuschneidung auf die Lippen wurde mit 70 % eine deutlich höhere Korrektklassifikationsrate als bei Zuschnitt auf das gesamte Sprechergesicht (34 %) erreicht. Mit dem GRUConv-Modell betrugen die maximalen Korrektklassifikationsraten 87 % bei bekannten Sprechenden und 63 % in der Validierung mit unbekannten Sprechenden.SchlussfolgerungDas erstmals für die deutsche Sprache entwickelte neuronale Netzwerk zum Lippenlesen zeigt eine sehr große, mit englischsprachigen Algorithmen vergleichbare Genauigkeit. Es funktioniert auch mit unbekannten Sprechenden und kann mit mehr Wortklassen generalisiert werden.

Mother-child similarity in brain morphology: A comparison of structural characteristics of the brain’s reading network

BackgroundSubstantial evidence acknowledges the complex gene-environment interplay impacting brain development and learning. Intergenerational neuroimaging allows the assessment of familial transfer effects on brain structure, function and behavior by investigating neural similarity in caregiver-child dyads. MethodsNeural similarity in the human reading network was assessed through well-used measures of brain structure (i.e., surface area (SA), gyrification (lG), sulcal morphology, gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT)) in 69 mother-child dyads (children’s age~11 y). Regions of interest for the reading network included left-hemispheric inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe and fusiform gyrus. Mother-child similarity was quantified by correlation coefficients and familial specificity was tested by comparison to random adult-child dyads. Sulcal morphology analyses focused on occipitotemporal sulcus interruptions and similarity was assessed by chi-square goodness of fit. ResultsSignificant structural brain similarity was observed for mother-child dyads in the reading network for lG, SA and GMV (r = 0.349/0.534/0.542, respectively), but not CT. Sulcal morphology associations were non-significant. Structural brain similarity in lG, SA and GMV were specific to mother-child pairs. Furthermore, structural brain similarity for SA and GMV was higher compared to CT. ConclusionIntergenerational neuroimaging techniques promise to enhance our knowledge of familial transfer effects on brain development and disorders.

A computational investigation of inventive spelling and the “Lesen durch Schreiben” method

In primary schools, Lesen durch Schreiben (LdS; “reading through writing”, known internationally as inventive spelling ) is a prevalent didactic method of reading and spelling instruction. In LdS, pupils learn writing through prolonged inventive spelling, meaning that only phonological but not orthographic spelling errors are corrected. Rigorous studies of the effectiveness of LdS are scarce and have delivered inconsistent results, casting doubt on the suitability of LdS for primary school instruction. Empirical investigations of writing acquisition methods are time-consuming, costly, and are plagued by methodological evaluation difficulties, such as separating method effects from other instruction-related variables. In this work, we developed a computational framework (based on recurrent neural networks) for reading and writing acquisition. This framework enables us to extract and systematically investigate some core principles of writing acquisition methods. Focusing on two German corpora, we compared the behavior of learning agents trained using the LdS regime against agents trained using a classical, primer-based regime. Experimental results revealed that our LdS agents performed significantly worse than our primer agents in writing tasks and, to a lesser extent, in reading tasks. Our results show that the stereotypical spelling mistakes of children exposed to LdS can be replicated with neural network models. These mistakes arise naturally during writing acquisition for all learning agents but are either suppressed or reinforced depending on the learning regime. We examined the learned, internal representations of both agents and found deviations in the LdS agent that may have induced the amplified confusion of similar phonemes. While we focused on two German corpora, similar results can be expected for alphabetic languages with similar graphene-phoneme regularities. In sum, LdS does not exhibit benefits over standard instruction in our simulations. However, we urge caution in drawing immediate conclusions for human learners. Instead, our work presents a modest step towards the construction of a computational framework for writing and reading instructional methods that may inspire future research.