Visual Motion Sensitivity and Literacy Skills in Japanese

要旨

The primary aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between literacy skills in Japanese and visual motion sensitivity as an index of visual magnocellular system function. A test battery using measures of auditory, phonological, orthographic, and visual processing, intelligence and literacy skills was administered to 43 unselected 7-8 year-old primary school children. The results suggest that children's visual motion sensitivity predicted literacy development in both Kana and Kanji after controlling for intelligence. Importantly, visual motion sensitivity explained the highest proportion of the variance in orthographic processing, replicating previous findings in alphabetic writing systems. These results suggest that visual motion sensitivity may play an important role in the development of literacy skills, irrespective of the script or writing system. Possible links between visual motion and literacy skills will be discussed in terms of the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the visual magnocellular system. In addition, Kana literacy development was best predicted by phonological short-term memory for nonwords, followed by orthographic processing. Kanji learning seemed to depend on multiple cognitive modalities, phonological, orthographic and visual domains. This result may reflect the nature of Kanji, which is visually more complex than Kana and needs to be pronounced at the whole-word orthographic level according to the context.

主題