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9 - Developmental Dyslexia in Japanese

from Part I - Developmental Dyslexia across Languages and Writing Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2019

By
Taeko N. Wydell
Edited by
Ludo Verhoeven ,
Charles Perfetti  and
Kenneth Pugh
Ludo Verhoeven
Affiliation:
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Charles Perfetti
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Kenneth Pugh
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

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.

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Developmental Dyslexia across Languages and Writing Systems , pp. 176 - 199
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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