Abstract: The predictors of reading development and the cognitive deficits of developmental dyslexics in English and Chinese orthographies are reviewed. The results show the cognitive resources children should possess in order to acquire reading skills keep consistency in different languages, including adequate learning and memory resources, normal visual-orthographical skills, and fine-grained representations of phonological and semantic knowledge; the main cognitive deficits of dyslexics also show cross-orthography consistency, mostly including phonological deficit and general learning and memory deficit. However the characteristics of language and orthography children are confronted with will affect the ease of reading acquisition and the phenotypes of developmental dyslexia

Key words: reading development, cognitive resources, developmental dyslexia, cognitive deficits