Researcher Wai Ting Siok of the University of Hong Kong, writing about the complications of dyslexia in Chinese children, observes that   "Written Chinese maps graphic forms -- characters -- onto meanings; Chinese characters possess a number of intricate strokes packed into a square configuration, and their pronunciations must be memorized by rote", and that "a fine-grained visuospatial analysis must be performed by the visual system in order to activate the characters' phonological and semantic information."

I wonder if this isn't linked to what I observed about exceptional visouspatial skills in Chinese students and why this trait makes it so easy to teach the majority (non-dyslexics) to read English using a whole-word method, then linking phonetics to the words already understood and recognized...