Brief Report Visual spatial skill: A consequence of learning to read? Catherine McBride-Chang a,⇑ , Yanling Zhou a , Jeung-Ryeul Cho b , Dorit Aram c , Iris Levin c , Liliana Tolchinsky d a Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China b Department of Psychology, Kyungnam University, Masan 631-701, South Korea c School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel d Department of Linguistics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona 08007, Spain article info Article history: Received 12 November 2010 Revised 10 December 2010 Available online 14 January 2011 Keywords: Visual skill Word reading Orthography Cross-cultural Chinese Hebrew Spanish abstract Does learning to read influence one’s visual skill? In Study 1, kin- dergartners from Hong Kong, Korea, Israel, and Spain were tested on word reading and a task of visual spatial skill. Chinese and Kor- ean kindergartners significantly outperformed Israeli and Spanish readers on the visual task. Moreover, in all cultures except Korea, good readers scored significantly higher on the visual task than did less good readers. In Study 2, we followed 215 Hong Kong Chi- nese kindergartners across 1 year, with word reading and visual skills tested twice. In this study, word reading at Time 1 by itself predicted 13% of unique variance in visual skill at Time 2. Together, these results underscore the potential importance of the process of learning to read for shaping one’s visual spatial skill development. Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Research on visual skill in relation to reading has a long history (e.g., Orton, 1925) but remains fairly modest. The majority of such research focuses on how visual skill might enhance reading skill, and these results are quite mixed across orthographies. There is general agreement that pure visual skill is not likely a core cause of reading across orthographies (e.g., Goswami, 2004; Vellutino, Steger, Moyer, Harding, & Niles, 1977). Others (e.g., Chan & Vernon, 1988; Dehaene, 2009; Hoosain, 1991) have suggested that the process of learning to read itself may influence visual skill, although explicit evidence for this association is relatively limited. For example, in a cross-cultural comparison of 8- to 14-year-olds, Demetriou and 0022-0965/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.12.003 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: cmcbride@psy.cuhk.edu.hk (C. McBride-Chang). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 109 (2011) 256–262 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp