Abecedaria has some information on Chinese dyslexia:

Dyslexia is often associated with an inability to either percieve or create the correct orientation in a letter or character. The classic visual image of dyslexic writing showed frequent reversals between the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’. In this view it would be difficult to impossible to be dyslexic in the Chinese writing system. However, this view is outdated, perhaps by 20-30 years according to this article.

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In fact, it is not neccesary for the actual symbols to represent reflected sets like ‘b’ and ‘d’ for children to have this confusion. The component parts of a Chinese character offer as much opportunity for difficulty to Chinese children as the various letter shapes, and irregular spellings offer English children. There is also a difference in phonological processing at a certain level. However, that is one component of the problem, not all.

If you’re incredibly interested in the topic, check out this very long article.

Addendum: Gary Feng has more bibliographic information, and includes an interesting image of Chinese dyslexia.

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Anyway, this reminds me of an old (and short) post where I observed that it’s easier to read the mirror image of Chinese text than English text.

Maybe it’s just me, since I find it quite easy to recognise reversed text. For instance, in Dan Brown’s hyperpopular Da Vinci Code, one of the puzzles given was reversed English text. Because I recognised it instantly, that part of the novel drove me insane because I had to plough through 2 pages of silly discussions between the 2 male characters (forgot their names) trying to figure out what script it was. Felt like ripping out those pages. Okay, many of the anagrams in the book were easy too, but that’s another post…

Maybe it’s just me, because I have this habit of writing reversed English text when I’m bored. Come to think of it, I’ve never tried doing that for Chinese. I’ll do it later.

If you’re starting to think that there’s no value in writing reverse, here are some good uses I have found:

If you’re outside a room that has condensation (due to aircon) on its glass partition, it’s fun to write silly messages reversed on the glass so the people inside can read. Fine, I know it’s show-off, but it’s still fun.

Or write a reversed message on a piece of paper, and hand it to a primary school kid, and tell her to decode the secret message by holding the paper against the light and viewing it from the other side. The look of admiration is priceless.

Conclusion: it is fun and useful to write in reverse.