📚 Reading ability is understood as “a process of interaction between the reader and the text, where processes of word recognition, structures, comprehension, meaning construction, critical evaluation, and experiences combine” (Grabe, 2009). In this sense, it is worth asking: What neuropsychological processes are involved in reading learning?

👨🏻‍🏫 First of all, I like to educate parents and specialists about the importance of sensory functionality: a set of processes where sensory organs are activated as a result of interaction with external stimuli, producing the activation of electrical and chemical thresholds that trigger the response of brain areas responsible for giving meaning to that information (Erazo, 2016). This means that whenever there is suspicion of reading difficulties, it must be ruled out that there are no sensory or organic impairments that may be interfering with reading ability. This is where other professionals from optometry or speech therapy play a fundamental role, as they would help detect any factors that may be affecting the proper intake of information through sensory organs (sight and hearing).

👀 Subsequently, once it has been ruled out that there are no visual or auditory factors that may be interfering with reading abilities, it is important to consider perceptual factors, attentional factors, memory, executive functioning, intelligence, psychomotor skills, and behavioral-emotional factors that may be interfering with reading abilities. For this purpose, the figure of the Educational Neuropsychology professional is of great importance.

🧠 Perceptual processes and their relationship with reading:

Perception allows us to organize, process, and interpret information, thus enabling us to understand what is perceived (Merchán and Henao, 2011). This indicates that difficulties in perceptual functionality can cause frequent errors when pronouncing letters, confusion of words during the reading process, and difficulty in understanding what has been read.

🧠 Attention processes:

Attention is the cognitive functionality responsible for voluntarily deciding which stimuli to respond to and which to ignore or inhibit. If you wish to delve deeper into attention processes, I recommend reading the article: attention and its importance in learning from neuropsychology.

🧠 Memory processes and their relationship with reading:

Based on Romero and Hernández (2011), abilities such as reading comprehension correlate with verbal memory skills. On the other hand, short-term visual memory allows the child to recognize the letters presented through the visual channel. Children with difficulties in their short-term visual memory will need to use other channels to compensate for deficiencies in their visual route, such as phonetic or verbal routes. Similarly, long-term memory is vital when it comes to storing definitions, expanding our vocabulary, and consolidating spelling skills. Hence, a personalized evaluation of memory systems is key when individualizing the intervention plan. If you wish to delve deeper into memory, I recommend reading the following article: Memory assessment and its importance in Educational Neuropsychology.

🧠 Executive function processes and reading:

Executive functions are high-level cognitive functions that help us plan to achieve specific goals or objectives. Factors such as cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control have been shown to be good predictors of reading performance (Martínez, 2014). If you wish to delve deeper into executive functions, I recommend reading the article: Neuropsychology of executive functions and their importance in education.

🧠 Behavioral-emotional processes and their relationship with reading:

Motivational, behavioral, and mental health factors can reinforce or hinder reading learning. It is important to monitor symptoms of anxiety, stress, or negative-challenging thoughts that may arise during the reading process, identify possible causes, and take action accordingly with a suitable professional.

🧠 Intelligence and its relationship with reading:

Processes of verbal or linguistic intelligence relate to the individual's ability to use language, including vocabulary processes, general knowledge, and information analysis. This is why intelligence tests can serve as good predictors when predicting a patient's development regarding their motor skills (León et al., 2012). Intelligence tests are one of the fundamental assessments during the diagnosis of dyslexia, as according to the DSM-V, “Learning difficulties are not explained by intellectual disabilities, uncorrected visual or auditory disorders, other mental or neurological disorders, psychosocial adversity, lack of proficiency in the language of academic instruction, or inadequate educational guidelines.” What does this mean? That if the patient shows signs of intellectual disability, they cannot automatically be diagnosed with dyslexia. If you wish to delve deeper into intelligence, I recommend reading the following article: Intelligence from Neuropsychology and Education.

🧠 Psychomotor skills and their relationship with reading:

It is essential to supervise the development of laterality, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and spatiotemporal orientation. For example, a child who is disoriented regarding the recognition of their left and right will be a child who, when in class and the teacher says “remember that we read from left to right,” will have difficulties understanding this type of instruction.

Similarly, it is also important to consider more specific reading tests that allow for contextualizing the treatment plan to be implemented: Reading tests and Dyslexia Diagnosis and Detection Tests are useful for this purpose.

⚡️ Phonological awareness:

Abundant studies show that children with reading difficulties often present difficulties in their phonological awareness (Kudo et al., 2015). Let us remember that phonological awareness is the set of skills that allows us to access the structure of spoken language and identify the phonological segments of words (spelling, syllable manipulation, identifying phonemes with their corresponding grapheme, etc.).

⚡️ Letter identification:

This involves retrieving letters from our memory. It is necessary to work on letter identification from a visual perspective (reading a list of letters in a book, for example) as well as a phonological perspective (making a proper phoneme-grapheme conversion, used in dictation activities).

⚡️ Lexical processes:

The recognition of words with their corresponding meaning is fundamental to improving the automation of the reading process. The greater the number of automated words, the greater the increase in reading speed.

⚡️ Syntactic processes:

This involves understanding how the organization of words can influence the meaning of a sentence. The use of punctuation marks also influences syntactic processes.

⚡️ Semantic processes:

Once we have finished reading, we must carry out three types of processes: extract the meaning from the text, integrate that meaning into our memory, and perform processes of constructing new knowledge or making inferences (Cuetos et al., 2014).

🇵🇦 How is Panama doing in terms of reading abilities? According to data from Paredes (2017), reading competence among Panamanian youth is below what is expected according to the results of the CRECER test in 2016, as 83% showed to be below the required level.

🦠💉 With this pandemic scenario, it is urgent for the Panamanian government to dedicate efforts to create national plans focused on stimulating reading processes along with their prior skills. Why? Below-average reading performance is often a predictive factor when referring to school failure (Rosario, 2016). It would be interesting to conduct research that helps us update these results, taking into consideration the virtual educational time that developed during the years 2020-2021 as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

🤩 Remember that at Neuropsyedu we are at your service regarding neuropsychological-educational evaluations that facilitate the integration of students into their educational environment. We have the following evaluations available that will allow us to have a complete assessment of reading abilities.

👉🏼 Reading evaluations are crucial in predicting your child's future learning in their academic context. Feel free to contact Neuropsyedu through this link.

  • ✅ American Psychiatric Association - APA. (2014). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 (5th ed.). Madrid: Panamericana Medical Publishing.
  • ✅ Erazo, O. (2016). Identification, description, and relationships between sensory integration, attention, and behavior. Colombian Journal of Social Sciences, 7(1), 21-48.
  • ✅ Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65-238.
  • ✅ Kudo M. F., Lussier C. M., & Swanson H. L. (2015). Reading disabilities in children: A selective meta-analysis of the cognitive literature. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 40, 51-62.
  • ✅ León, A., Amaya, S. and Orozco, D. (2012). Relationship between reading comprehension, intelligence, and performance on saber pro tests in a sample of university students. Culture, Education and Society 3(1), 187-204.
  • ✅ Martínez, J. (2014). Relationship between executive functions, phonological awareness, and initial reading in first-year primary education students. Education and Digital Future Journal, 10, 65-80.
  • ✅ Merchán Price, M. S. & Henao Calderón, J. L. (2011). Influence of visual perception on learning. Science & Technology for Visual and Ocular Health, 9(1), 93-101.
  • ✅ Romero, E., and Hernández, N. (2011). The role of Memory in the Reading Process. Scientific Threshold, (19), 24-31.
  • ✅ Rosario, K. J. (2016). Evaluation, diagnosis, and psychopedagogical treatment of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia in 11-year-old children. (Digital Repository of La UTMACH).