I consider visual word recognition a primer phenomenon to study high level cognitive processes and how they interact with sensorymotor processes. To this end, within the Reading and Lexical Processing Lab [W-READ] of the ISTC-CNR and the Adult Cognition and Neuropsychology group of the Department of Psychology of the University of York, we use behavioral experimental paradigms (i.e., Visual Single Word Recognition and Visual Lexical Decision) to study language processes in participants with different expertise (adult and children) and different proficiency (typical readers, acquired/developmental dyslexia).
Within the WoRHD project I'm exploring the impact of auditory deprivation on word recognition. Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. In Barca et al. (2013) we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings.
Results show that mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect, suggesting that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.
Following is a short list of recent publications on this topic.
Typical readers:
Deaf readers:
Acquired/developmental dyslexia:
Genetic syndrome: