Visual Memory of Motor Imagery in Children With Specific Disorders of Kanji Writing

要旨

The present article examines properties of information processing in children with specific disorders in writing kanji. Children with kanji-writing disabilities (N=44) were classified into a group of 9 children with kanji-reading and -writing disabilities (LDRW) and a group of 35 children with only kanji-writing disabilities (LDW). Discriminant analysis revealed that the variable that contributed significantly to discriminating the children with kanji-reading and -writing disabilities and the children with only kanji-writing disabilities was number recall on the K-ABC. This indicates that a dysfunction of auditory memory might relate to the children's difficulty in reading kanji. In both the children with kanji-writing disabilities and the children with kanji-reading and-writing disabilities, scores on a test of visual memory of motor imagery were lower than on the hand movement, spatial memory, and triangle subtests of the K-ABC. Thus, a dysfunction of the visual memory of motor imagery might relate to the children's difficulty in writing kanji. In an analysis of type of errors, the children with kanji-writing disabilities showed higher ratios of occurrence of phonological errors and morphological errors compared to the children with kanji-reading and -writing disabilities. This suggests that the children with kanji-writing disabilities might tend to depend on a visual or auditory image of kanji that has already been acquired.

主題