The term ‘language’ generally subsumes both spoken and written forms though they are very different. Spoken language is more biological and spontaneously acquired while literacy (reading and writing) is a more culturally evolved skill. Learning to read requires explicit, conscious instruction and practice. Spoken language is a unique feature of the human species while reading and writing is the hallmark of human civilization. The origin of language dates back to about 1.5 million years ago while writing and reading date back to about 6000 years ago—a very recent phenomenon in human history. Therefore, human brains are not hardwired for literacy. There are no dedicated neuronal structures or networks specifically evolved for reading and writing. Reading skills are achievable due to the malleability or neuroplasticity of the human brain, which has an inbuilt capacity of rewiring the existing (pre-wired) neuronal connections as a function of practice and experience. Reading, in this way, is built on the neuronal network evolved primarily for speech (Dehaene et al., 2010). It is not surprising that reading/writing is built on spoken language as by the time children are introduced to literacy skills they have already mastered the spoken language to a large extent. Modern research suggests that newborn infants develop initial language-related skills shortly after birth (Wu et al., 2022). Eye movement studies also suggest that eye movements during text reading align with the rate of speech production (Gagl et al., 2022). These recent studies support the view that reading/writing, a culturally learned and transmitted secondary linguistic skill, has grown out of spoken language roots.

In reading/writing research, one comes across the terms orthography and script that might be confusing. The term script refers to visual symbols that we see in print (written form) encoding a particular language. A particular system of symbols may be used by more than one language (e.g., the Roman script is used for writing many European languages such as English, Italian, Spanish, etc., Kannada script is used to write Tulu, Konkani, and Kodava besides Kannada) and the same language may be written using different scripts depending upon geo-political situations (e.g., Konkani in India is written in three scripts—in Devanagari, Kannada, and Malayalam). Orthography is a broader term involving the specific map** rules and conditions between a language and its script.

Though reading (writing included) is an explicitly learned skill, it becomes so automatized and spontaneous that we forget that it is learned. Think of the Stroop test. We cannot resist reading the color names though the task is to name the ink/font color used to write the color names. Once children learn to read and write, language becomes visually concrete, which facilitates metalinguistic awareness. The visual images or orthographic images of phonograms/ morphograms that readers internalize transform the way they think and process speech and language. This leads to three major questions. First, whether a literate mind is different from an illiterate one. A related question is whether the cognitive consequences of literacy are the same across cultures. The second question is whether the language and/or orthography in which one becomes literate exerts any specific effects on cognition.The third question, a related one, is what are the implications of biliteracy/triliteracy/multiliteracy for reading and cognition.

There have been some studies probing the first (e.g., Huettig & Mishra, 2014; Morais et al., 1986; Wolf, 2015) and the second (e.g., Georgiou et al., 2008; Landerl et al., 2021; Nag & Perfetti, 2014; Prakash et al., 1993; Rao et al., 2017; Winskel & Kim, 2021) question. These studies show enough evidence favoring the view that there are certain differences between literate and illiterate minds/brains in their functional organization. Studies on the orthographic effect on reading and cognition also clearly suggest that the cognitive processes underlying reading and non-linguistic tasks are influenced by orthography-specific features. Still, one cannot deny that research, in general, is skewed and biased in favor of alphabetic orthographies (Daniels & Share, 2018; Share, 2008). Many of the research questions, designs, theories, and models that drive research are essentially Eurocentric and may hardly be relevant to other major orthographic contexts (Padakannaya & Mohanty, 2004; Vaid & Padakannaya, 2004; Winskel & Padakannaya, 2014). Research related to the third question too is impacted by the dominance of western alphabetic perspectives that need to be addressed (Vaid, 2022).

The nature of the relationship between language and cognition is a more basic issue that goes beyond the above questions. In general, there is agreement among researchers that language and cognition are inseparable. The influence between them is mutual and bidirectional. However, more pertinent to the topic of our focus here is how to tease apart the influence of spoken language and written language on cognition as they are often confounded and undifferentiated in the literature. For example, in most of the psycholinguistic studies on monolinguals or bi/trilinguals, the participants are monoliterate or bi/triliterate. Though literacy is a culturally acquired skill, the differential effect of literacy is hardly considered in such studies. Moreover, many psycholinguistic studies have written words/sentences as stimuli. The interpretation of results in such studies seldom differentiates between orality and literacy modes. It is also not clear whether the prefix bi stands for bi, tri, and multi as they are rarely differentiated.

Human brains are similar but orthographies or scripts vary across cultures. Languages differ and so are the way they are written. There are different principles and ways that speech is encoded in different writing systems. Writing systems may vary in terms of opacity/transparency (whether or not the map** between written symbols and sound is consistent) or grain size (the linguistic level that the character/symbols represent) and script features (the way it is written on two dimensions- visual configuration, directionality), etc. When coding principles are different across orthographies, it is natural that decoding strategies too will vary.

We do not support the strong linguistic determinism version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis but accept the linguistic influence version of the theory. Multiple illustrations described in the two non-empirical papers in this journal issue and our own observations (Padakannaya, 2000; Winskel & Kim, 2021) advocate script-specific influences on reading and cognition. Thus, there is a universality in reading processes across cultures, and at the same time, there are script-specific effects. Hence, we see both script-independent and script-dependent impacts on reading and cognition across cultures.

There has been more concern among researchers, of late, about the alphabetic-centered bias resulting in a non-perfect (if not distorted) science of reading. Many constructs, phenomena, theories, and models that emerged from research findings on alphabetic scripts may not be applicable and relevant to readers of non-alphabetic scripts. For example, the crucial significance of phoneme awareness in alphabetic literacy may be merely due to the explicitness of phonemic components in alphabetic writing (Morais et al., 1986; Padakannaya, 2000). The very concept of a letter, upper/lower cases, spelling, and grapheme may not be present in many major scripts. The conventions followed regarding the directionality of writing, spacing or no-spacing between word boundaries, linearity/non-linearity of ligatures, degree of explicitness of symbols, single/multiple forms of symbols, etc. may vary across scripts. Cultural practices associated with literacy initiation, and training may also drastically vary across cultures. For example, traditionally among many communities in India, children are initiated in a ceremony where the father makes the child write ‘Om’ (or ‘Aum’), a sacred, spiritual syllable in Indic religions on a plateful of rice grains kept in front of the deity and simultaneously whispering the sound Om/Aum in their ear. In other words, Indian children are traditionally taught reading by writing (expressive/productive mode).

We planned this special issue to highlight a few unexplored aspects of scripts influencing reading and cognition from diverse script contexts. The emphasis was on papers that bring in new perspectives from diverse scripts (with an emphasis on non-alphabetic ones) on how specific script features can impact reading processes/strategies and/or how they impact cognition. Some papers deal with a single script but highlight the specific features of the script in question and their cognitive-linguistic implications (i.e., papers by Bae et al., 2022; Inoue et al., 2022; Labusch et al., 2022; Yin et al., 2022) while some compare the script-specific influences on cognition across two or more scripts (i.e., papers by Georgiou et al., 2022; Mirza & Gottardo, 2022; Winskel & Perea, 2022). There are two non-empirical papers one on the ‘script relativity hypothesis’ (Pae, 2022) and another on ‘biscriptality’ (Vaid, 2022). Vaid’s paper highlights the need for moving beyond the monoscriptal Eurocentric bias to a cross-linguistic, non-alphabetic biscriptal approach to gain a better understanding of bilingual word recognition and lexical representation. Pae’s paper argues for extending the’linguistic relativity hypothesis’ to a ‘script relativity hypothesis’. By and large, we feel that we have successfully put together a thought-provoking and pro-research generating collection of papers that encourage future research on script-specific influences on reading and cognition in neglected /less-known languages and their orthographies so that we can achieve a more realistic and comprehensive picture of the science of reading (and its implications for the human mind and civilization).