BoingBoing points to an interesting yet possibly-not-unexpected (phonic vs symbolic) study that shows dyslexia occurs in different brain regions for native English and Chinese speakers. This means that some English students learning Chinese may find their symptoms disappear when working in Mandarin.

“Becoming a reader is a fairly dramatic process for the brain,” explained Eden, who was not part of Tan’s research team on this paper.

For children, learning to read is culturally important but is not really natural, Eden said, so when the brain orients toward a different writing system it copes with it differently.

For example, English-speaking children learn the sounds of letters and how to combine them into words, while Chinese youngsters memorize hundreds of symbols which represent words.

“The implication here is that when we see a reading disability, we see it in different parts of the brain depending on the writing system that the child is born into,” Eden said.

That means, “we cannot just assume that any dyslexic child is going to be helped by the same kind of intervention,” she said in a telephone interview.

Tan said the new findings suggest that treating Chinese speakers with dyslexia may use working memory tasks and tests relating to sensor-motor skills, while current treatments of English dyslexia focus on letter-sound conversions and sound awareness.