In SISSA, I have worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2021) and a Visiting Scientist (2021 – now) in the lab of Prof. Davide Crepaldi. We ran experiments with adults, children, and non-human animals (rattus norvegicus) to determine which aspects of reading can be attributed to generic properties of the visual system. In particular, we tested, and found evidence for the influential claim -- that the evolutionary-recent ability to process written language relies on the evolutionary-old ability to extract visual statistical regularities from the environment. We also explored a few more questions about human language, learning and memory. You can read about our findings here and here. Our work was funded by ERC Starting Grant (No 679010 STATLEARN ERC-2015-STG) awarded to Davide.