Figure 1.

Illustration of different activation patterns of non-impaired (NI) and dyslexic (DYS) readers. The strategy to compare abnormality patterns of dyslexic readers (relative to non-impaired readers) across languages would correctly identify the situations illustrated in sections (A–C) as showing an orthography-specific abnormality pattern and would correctly reject the situation illustrated in section (D). In contrast, the actual strategy used by Paulesu et al. (2001) (i.e., comparing dyslexic activation directly across languages), would only correctly identify the situation illustrated in section (B). It would fail to identify the situations illustrated in sections (A) and (C) and would incorrectly identify the situation illustrated in section (D).