Learning letters and sounds
Learning letters and sounds
Literacy, dyslexia, and the school body-territory
Before entering the article, we can return to the body for a moment.
Breathing.
Jaw.
Tongue.
Ears.
Eyes.
Hands.
Now, imagine a child facing a letter.
The letter is on the board.
The sound is in the teacher’s mouth.
The body tries to bring the two together.
To see.
To hear.
To name.
To repeat.
To remember.
To make a mistake.
To try again.
For some children, this encounter between letter and sound happens as a path.
For others, it happens as tension.
And this is exactly where the article “Dynamic behavioral and neural correlates of letter-speech sound learning in typical and dyslexic readers”, by Yuewei Cao, Manli Zhang, Francesco Gentile, and Milene Bonte, becomes so important.
It investigates how typical readers and readers with dyslexia learn associations between visual symbols and speech sounds, following behavioral and neural changes during this process with EEG.
For BrainLatam2026, this article opens a larger question:
is literacy only the teaching of codes, or is it the reorganization of the school body-territory so that sound, letter, attention, safety, and belonging can meet?
The original question of the article
The central question of the article can be stated like this:
how do typical readers and readers with dyslexia learn new associations between symbols and speech sounds, and which neural changes accompany this learning?
Learning the relationship between letters and sounds is a fundamental step for reading in alphabetic systems.
The article begins from the idea that difficulties in forming associations between letters and speech sounds may be an important challenge for people with dyslexia, while the dynamic trajectories of this learning process are still not completely understood.
This question is valuable because it does not treat reading as a single finished skill.
It opens reading as process.
Before fluent words, there is the encounter between symbol and sound.
Before the sentence, there is audiovisual integration.
Before automatic reading, there is effort.
And before the school error, there is often a body trying to organize visual, auditory, motor, affective, and social stimuli at the same time.
What the article actually investigated
The study used EEG to examine behavioral and neural changes while 31 typical readers and 31 adult readers with dyslexia learned to map six new symbols onto spoken Dutch syllables, with pairs of high or low phonological similarity.
The scientific materiality of the article passes through:
symbol-sound association learning;
comparison between typical readers and readers with dyslexia;
manipulation of phonological similarity;
behavioral measures of accuracy and reaction time;
EEG;
changes in event-related potentials, or ERPs;
frontotemporal, temporoparietal, and occipitoparietal regions;
post-training reading tests using an artificial script.
The results indicated that both groups learned the initial associations.
There were also learning-related ERP changes in frontotemporal, temporoparietal, and occipitoparietal regions.
Phonologically similar pairs produced lower accuracy, slower reaction times, and reduced ERP responses.
Readers with dyslexia showed lower performance in post-training symbol-reading tests, and this performance correlated with reading and phonological skills.
This point is crucial.
The article does not simply say that readers with dyslexia “do not learn.”
It shows something more precise:
initial association formation may be comparable, while the application and automatization of these associations in reading may remain difficult.
The strength of the article
The strength of this article lies in looking at learning as a trajectory.
Many debates about dyslexia remain trapped in labels.
“Has difficulty.”
“Switches letters.”
“Reads slowly.”
“Cannot keep up.”
“Needs to try harder.”
But the article enters before the school label.
It observes the process.
How does the visual symbol meet the sound?
How does this encounter change with repetition?
How does the brain respond when sounds are phonologically close?
How do typical readers and readers with dyslexia differ not only in the final result, but in the dynamics of learning?
This is the strength: moving dyslexia away from a moral idea of failure and toward a neurodynamic investigation of learning.
The child is not lazy.
The adult with dyslexia is not less intelligent.
The body-territory is trying to solve a complex integration task.
Letter.
Sound.
Attention.
Memory.
Time.
Body.
School.
History.
The local optimum of the article
The local optimum of the article lies in the neural and behavioral dynamics of letter-sound learning.
It is strong because it uses EEG to follow the rapid temporal unfolding of the process.
Reading does not happen only in abstract brain regions.
It happens in milliseconds of integration.
The sound arrives.
The symbol appears.
Memory tries to connect them.
Attention selects.
Error corrects.
Repetition reorganizes.
EEG allows part of this temporal dance to be followed.
The article is also strong because it distinguishes different phases of learning.
The authors emphasize the importance of separating initial acquisition, automatization, and application of learned associations, especially when thinking about interventions for reading difficulties.
For BrainLatam2026, this is decisive.
Because school often evaluates only the result.
Read or did not read.
Correct or incorrect.
Kept up or fell behind.
But the article shows that maybe the question needs to be more precise:
in which phase of learning is the body suffering?
In initial formation?
In phonological discrimination?
In maintaining the association?
In speed?
In automatization?
In application during reading?
In the safety to make mistakes?
In the school Tekoha?
The school body-territory
BrainLatam2026 reads this article from the perspective of the school body-territory.
Literacy does not happen in emptiness.
It happens in a classroom.
With light.
Noise.
Desk.
Board.
Teacher.
Classmates.
Shame.
Expectation.
Evaluation.
Notebook.
Class time.
Family pressure.
Comparison.
Diagnosis.
Body history.
The letter does not enter only through the eyes.
The sound does not enter only through the ears.
Reading enters through the whole body.
A child learns better when the body has internal space to try.
When making mistakes does not mean being humiliated.
When school time allows repetition.
When sound is listened to carefully.
When the letter does not become threat.
When the classmate does not become tribunal.
When the teacher does not become fear.
When the diagnosis does not become prison.
Literacy is neurobiological.
But it is also territorial.
Zone 2 and Zone 3 in learning
In BrainLatam2026 language, learning needs Zone 2.
Zone 2 is the state in which the body can sustain challenge without collapsing.
There is effort.
There is attention.
There is error.
There is correction.
But there is still enough safety to continue.
In literacy, Zone 2 is the territory where the child can say:
“I cannot do it yet, but I can try again.”
Zone 3 appears when the task stops being a challenge and becomes a threat.
The letter tightens.
The sound confuses.
The classroom watches.
The body heats up.
Breathing changes.
The jaw contracts.
The hand freezes.
The mistake becomes shame.
Reading becomes danger.
And when the child enters Zone 3, learning can be hijacked.
Not because the brain does not want to learn.
But because the body is busy surviving the environment.
This is why the article is so useful for BrainLatam2026.
It shows letter-sound learning as a dynamic process.
We expand:
this process can happen in Zone 2 or be captured by Zone 3.
School Tekoha: when the classroom enters the body
Tekoha is extended interoception.
It is territory entering the internal states of the body.
In literacy, school Tekoha is decisive.
The same letter can arrive in different ways depending on the environment.
In a safe classroom, the letter can be an invitation.
In a threatening classroom, the letter can be judgment.
In a caring school, error can be learning data.
In a punitive school, error can become identity.
“I am dumb.”
“I cannot do it.”
“I hate reading.”
“I always get it wrong.”
“Everyone laughs.”
Dyslexia, then, cannot be thought of only as an individual difficulty.
It needs to be thought inside the school Tekoha.
Because the body with dyslexia does not encounter only symbols and sounds.
It also encounters expectations, comparisons, classroom rhythm, methodology, evaluation, family, access to intervention, and public policy.
APUS of reading: letter as bodily action
APUS is extended proprioception.
It is territory entering through position, gesture, direction, distance, and field of action.
In reading, APUS appears more than it seems.
The eye travels across the line.
The hand follows.
The mouth rehearses the sound.
The tongue prepares the syllable.
The body leans.
The finger points.
Rhythm organizes.
The space of the page orients.
A word is not only a symbol.
It is a visual path.
It is motor gesture.
It is sequence.
It is direction.
It is space.
For a child in literacy, the page can be territory.
The line can be a road.
The syllable can be a step.
The sound can be movement.
Reading happens when the body learns to cross this symbolic territory.
5D: letters and sounds as representational spaces
In the 5D Body-Territory model, perception is an abstraction represented inside a body-territory in five dimensions: 3D, movement, and qualia.
The letter-sound association can also be thought this way.
The letter occupies visual space.
The sound occupies auditory and motor space.
The task of literacy is to create a stable bridge between these spaces.
When the child sees a letter, the sound needs to become available.
When the child hears a sound, the letter needs to be able to appear.
This bridge is not only cognitive.
It is spatial.
The letter needs to find a place.
The sound needs to find a place.
The mouth needs to find a gesture.
Memory needs to find a trace.
Attention needs to maintain the bond.
Repetition needs to facilitate reactivation.
When this bridge becomes automatic, reading flows.
When this bridge requires excessive energy, reading can become fatigue.
Movement and lived time in reading
The article works with learning across blocks and rapid responses measured by accuracy, reaction time, and EEG.
BrainLatam2026 translates this as:
reading is organizing internal movement.
The letter appears.
The sound is searched for.
The association activates.
The response comes.
The error corrects.
Repetition changes the probability of reactivation.
Reading becomes faster not only because the student “memorized.”
But because the body-territory reduced the cost of crossing the path.
In the BrainLatam2026 model, lived time is born from the movement of internal spaces.
In reading, this is very clear.
The child who reads fluently feels the word as passage.
The child who struggles to read feels the word as obstacle.
The clock measures seconds.
The body lives the crossing.
The qualia of literacy
Literacy has qualia.
Pleasure.
Shame.
Pride.
Fear.
Curiosity.
Anger.
Frustration.
Relief.
Belonging.
Exclusion.
A letter can carry joy when the child manages to read their own name.
A word can carry shame when the child makes a mistake out loud.
A book can be an open world.
Or it can be a threat.
The article measures accuracy, reaction time, and EEG.
BrainLatam2026 asks:
which qualia accompanies this learning?
Because there is no reading without sensation.
And a school that ignores the student’s sensation may teach the code while wounding the body-territory.
Dyslexia without capture
The BrainLatam2026 reading of this article needs to be careful.
Dyslexia is not lack of intelligence.
It is not laziness.
It is not moral inattention.
It is not absence of future.
It is a specific form of difficulty in learning and automatizing reading, often connected to challenges in phonology, audiovisual integration, and fluency.
The article shows that readers with dyslexia may show comparable initial learning under certain experimental conditions, while still facing later difficulties in applying the learned associations in reading tasks.
This is very important for education.
Because intervention should not only ask:
“did they learn or not?”
It should ask:
can they apply it?
can they automatize it?
can they transfer it?
can they read under pressure?
can they read without shame?
can they remain in Zone 2 while reading?
Jiwasa: learning to read is collective
Literacy is never only individual.
It is Jiwasa.
Family.
Teachers.
School.
Classmates.
Library.
Health system.
Public policy.
Teaching material.
Intervention time.
Diagnosis.
Access to speech-language therapy.
Access to neuropsychology.
Written culture.
Cell phone.
Algorithm.
Market.
State.
A child does not learn to read alone.
Even when alone with the book, there is a network there.
A network that can care.
Or capture.
A Jiwasa of care says:
“let us discover how your body learns.”
A Jiwasa of capture says:
“you are behind.”
A Jiwasa of care adapts time, method, and listening.
A Jiwasa of capture compares, humiliates, and rushes.
A Jiwasa of care understands that reading is neurodevelopment.
A Jiwasa of capture treats reading as proof of personal value.
BrainLatam2026 asks:
what Jiwasa are we creating around children who are learning to read?
DNA Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence
This article also allows us to think about the relationship between DNA Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.
DNA Intelligence is information lived in the body.
It is the body learning letter and sound.
It is the ear distinguishing phonemes.
It is the eye recognizing forms.
It is the mouth preparing syllables.
It is memory reactivating associations.
It is the hand writing.
It is the body trying to maintain safety while learning.
Artificial Intelligence can help a great deal.
It can create adaptive literacy tools.
Identify error patterns.
Personalize rhythm.
Transform text into sound.
Support teachers.
Suggest specific activities.
Democratize access to training.
But AI does not live the shame of reading aloud.
It does not feel the body freeze before the board.
It does not know what it means to be called slow.
It does not carry the school Tekoha.
It does not feel the relief of finally being able to read a word.
AI can organize learning data.
DNA Intelligence lives literacy.
The question is:
how can we use AI to protect Zone 2, expand a caring school Tekoha, and support bodies that learn in different ways?
Generous decolonial critique
The article uses adult native speakers of Dutch and works with an artificial script of six symbol-sound pairs.
The authors themselves indicate limits in generalizing the results to children in real reading acquisition and raise questions about how effects may vary across different writing systems, including less transparent and non-alphabetic orthographies.
This observation is essential for BrainLatam2026.
Literacy in Brazil, Latin America, Indigenous schools, multilingual contexts, urban peripheries, and territories of inequality cannot be reduced to one universal model.
Portuguese is not Dutch.
Spanish is not English.
Guarani is not Portuguese.
A bilingual child does not learn in the same field as a monolingual child.
A child who arrives at school hungry does not learn in the same Tekoha as a child with food security.
A child who suffers racism does not read in the same body as a child protected by the norm.
A child with a diagnosis accesses another future when the State offers support.
The article is strong.
BrainLatam2026 expands:
letter-sound learning is also body-territory, language, history, State, and belonging.
BrainLatam2026 experimental proposal
From this article, BrainLatam2026 could propose an experiment in a real school context:
How do different school Tekohas modulate letter-sound learning, bodily regulation, and entry into Zone 2 or Zone 3 in children with and without risk for dyslexia?
Possible design:
children in the initial phase of literacy;
group with typical development;
group with family risk or early signs of reading difficulty;
letter-sound association tasks;
syllable and pseudoword reading tasks;
school environments with different levels of safety, noise, pressure, and support;
comparison between punitive, neutral, and caring intervention styles.
Measures:
EEG for temporal dynamics of letter-sound integration;
fNIRS for prefrontal hemodynamics during effort, attention, and regulation;
eye-tracking for visual path through the word;
HRV/RMSSD for autonomic regulation;
breathing for rhythm and lived time;
GSR for alert;
jaw and facial EMG for tension;
behavioral performance: accuracy, reaction time, fluency;
adapted child report about fear, confidence, shame, and pleasure;
teacher report about school Tekoha;
Jiwasa analysis: family, school, access to support, diagnosis, public policy.
The hypothesis would be:
a caring school Tekoha keeps the body in Zone 2, favors repetition, reduces autonomic cost, and improves the application of letter-sound associations; a threatening Tekoha pushes the body into Zone 3, increases tension, reduces attentional availability, and transforms reading into danger.
DANA and school data
Researching literacy requires DANA.
School data are delicate.
Grades.
Errors.
Reading time.
Diagnoses.
Reports.
Voice recordings.
EEG.
Images.
Family history.
These data can care.
Or they can capture.
DANA asks:
who will have access to these data?
will they be used to support the child or to label them?
will the school receive guidance or only classification?
will diagnosis open care or close the future?
will the metric be a signal or a sentence?
In literacy, measuring is an ethical responsibility.
Because every number can become destiny.
Body-Territory Diplomacy in school
If the body-territory is the minimum unit of the State, literacy is one of the first public diplomacies of life.
The school meets the body and says:
“this is the written world.”
But the way it says this matters.
It can say it with care.
Or with violence.
It can open territory.
Or close it.
It can create belonging.
Or produce exile.
The letter is small.
But the politics that pass through it are enormous.
Teaching reading is teaching a body to cross symbols without losing its dignity.
Closing
The article by Cao and colleagues matters because it shows that learning associations between symbols and speech sounds is a dynamic trajectory, with behavioral and neural changes observable through EEG.
It also shows that readers with dyslexia may learn initial associations, while still presenting difficulties in the later application of those associations in reading tasks.
For BrainLatam2026, this article opens an essential path:
literacy is not only code.
It is body-territory.
It is sound entering the body.
It is letter becoming space.
It is attention sustaining a bridge.
It is school modulating Zone 2 or Zone 3.
It is school Tekoha.
It is Jiwasa of care.
It is DNA Intelligence learning with the written world.
And it is also a political question:
what kind of school allows different bodies to learn without being captured by error?
Reading begins when letter and sound meet.
But literacy flourishes when this encounter happens with safety, time, repetition, belonging, and dignity.
Highlighted reference
Commented article:
Cao, Y., Zhang, M., Gentile, F., & Bonte, M. (2026).
Dynamic behavioral and neural correlates of letter-speech sound learning in typical and dyslexic readers.
npj Science of Learning, 11, Article 27.
DOI: 10.1038/s41539-026-00410-0.
This article is the main basis for this BrainLatam2026 commentary. From its EEG investigation of learning associations between visual symbols and speech sounds in typical readers and readers with dyslexia, we expand the discussion toward literacy, school Tekoha, Zone 2 and Zone 3, 5D Body-Territory, APUS of reading, the qualia of error, educational Jiwasa, DNA Intelligence, and the question of how to teach letters and sounds without reducing the child to performance.
