Developmental Dyslexia in Japanese

要旨

In this chapter, language universality and language specificity of reading processes especially in Japanese are discussed with a special focus given to typical and atypical literacy acquisition/development by Japanese children. First, a brief introduction to the Japanese writing systems is provided: the syllabic Hiragana and Katakana and the morphographic Kanji. Second, research into the cognitive processes involved in reading Kana and Kanji is introduced, including a discussion on how whole-word-level and sub-word-level processes contribute to the computation of phonology from Kana and Kanji from a language-universality perspective. Third, the prevalence of reading impairments amongst Japanese children is discussed, including how their reading impairments (dyslexia) are manifested in reading Kana and Kanji, drawing attention to the fact that different orthographies manifest children’s reading difficulties differently, linking this to the language specificity. Finally, differences in the neural correlates of reading in different orthographies as well as in dyslexic and normal readers are discussed.

主題