Orthographic Systems and Skilled Word Recognition Processes in Reading

The process of recognizing printed words has been studied for many years, yielding several important models of word recognition in reading. These models provide a variety of descriptions of the word recognition process, given different assumptions regarding the structure of the lexical system. Yet what all models have in common is the recognition that reading involves the processing of orthographic, phonological, semantic, and morphological information. Since this information is conveyed differently in each language, the question of how the reader’s linguistic environment shapes the reading process is of primary importance. This chapter focuses on the relations between the specific characteristics of different orthographic systems and skilled reading. The starting point is an outline of the dimensions on which orthographic systems differ from each other (see also Treiman & Kessler, this volume). This discussion will be followed by a detailed description of what skilled reading entails. As such a description is necessarily model-dependent, two main approaches to skilled reading will be presented. As a final step, the discussion will outline how proficient reading is shaped by the structure of the language and its orthographic system.