Grasping Letters in Space: Embodied and Digital Ecologies for Inclusive Reading.

The Dual Route Cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart et al., 2001) remains a foundational framework for understanding reading processes and developmental dyslexia, linking reading difficulties to the efficiency and automatization of phonological and lexical pathways. While the DRC provides a robust account of decoding mechanisms, recent research invites a broader reflection on the conditions under which these processes are enacted. This paper offers a theoretical contribution that integrates cognitive models of reading with perspectives from embodied, extended, and ecological cognition. Within this framework, phonological and morphological decoding are discussed as dynamic coordination processes involving visual, auditory, and action-related information. Embodied and digitally mediated environments are examined as ecological contexts that may support the stabilization and integration of decoding processes by making linguistic structures perceptible, manipulable, and spatially organized. Embodied and digital ecologies are not discussed as corrective tools, but as conditions that may expand the range of viable reading experiences while remaining grounded in established theories of reading development.