How the brain learns to read: start by unlearning.

New research indicates that in order to learn to recognize words, children's brains may have to do some unlearning. Dr. Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist in France, discovered that the ability to recognize the mirror image of a word comes naturally to children.  He believes that this is a skill human brains have had for much longer than the written word has been around, evolving from when primates needed to be able to recognize the reflection of a predator in a pond, for example.  This may also explain why most children, in their early writing, write letters and words backwards, which Dr. Dehaene calls "early mirror reading." Children make this mistake, he believes, because they must first unlearn their ability to recognize mirror images of words before they can become proficient readers and writers.  Read the full article here.