Developmental relationships between visual cognitive skills and hiragana reading in Japanese children aged 4-8 years: insights from mirror letter reading task.

This study examined the development of visual cognitive abilities related to hiragana reading, focusing on how spatial relational processing influences letter, word, and pseudo-word recognition. Children aged 4-8 years participated in visual cognitive tasks, including figure-ground separation, left-right recognition, and spatial relationship processing. Their reading performance was also assessed for normal and mirrored hiragana letters, words, and pseudo-words. The experiment was conducted remotely via an online video-conferencing platform, with both the experimenter and a caregiver present to ensure proper monitoring and support. The results revealed that figure-ground discrimination was significantly associated with single-letter reading speed, while left-right reversal discrimination performance predicted word reading speed. Additionally, categorical spatial relation processing played a crucial role in pseudo-word reading. Notably, children with less developed categorical spatial processing abilities demonstrated reduced differences in reading speed between mirrored and normal letters, suggesting that the ability to process categorical spatial relationships is essential for distinguishing between mirrored and standard letter forms. These findings highlight the importance of spatial relational processing in early literacy development and suggest that distinct visual cognitive functions contribute differently to letter, word, and pseudo-word recognition.