Introduction -- PART ONE. LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF WRITING -- Determining the Level of a Script -- Writing Systems and Written Language -- Double Articulation in Writing -- Writing System and Morphology. Some Orthographic Regularities of German -- PART TWO. HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF WRITING -- Literacy and Achievement in the Ancient World -- Development of Writing as Social Problem Solving -- Decipherment of Forgotten Writing Systems: Two Different Approaches -- Reconstructing the Phonology of Dead Languages -- Autochthonous American Writing Systems: The Aztec and Maya Examples -- Le Développement d'un Alphabet National dans une Communauté Multilingue -- Adult Literacy in a Context of Cultural Revolution: Structural Parallels of the Literacy Process in Sixteenth-Century Germany and Present-Day Bénin -- Tradition and Innovation in Alphabet Making -- Writing and Literacy in China -- PART THREE. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WRITING -- The Development of Writing: Communication and Cognition -- The Development of Literacy: A Complex Psychological Problem -- Literacy and the Comprehension and Expression of Literal Meaning -- Teaching Written Language as a First Language to a Deaf Boy -- The Role of Meaning and Linearity in Reading -- Polarization of Reading Performance -- Index of Subjects -- Index of Names.