Uno, A. 1, 2 , Haruhara, N. 3, 2 , Kaneko, M. 4, 2 , Awaya, N. 5, 2 , Kozuka, J. 6, 2 & Gotoh, T. 3, 2
1 Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba
2 LD/Dyslexia Centre
3 Faculty of Health Science, Mejiro Univesity
4 Faculty of Medical Science for Health, Teikyo Heisei University
5 Department of Rehabilitation, Tokyo Saiseikai Central Hospital
6 Saitama Medical Center for Children
Disability of phonological awareness is one of the main cognitive disabilities of developmental dyslexia in English speaking countries. In Japanese speaking children with developmental dyslexia, most of them have problems both of phonological awareness and visual cognitive disabilities. However, we found four children who showed reading and spelling difficulty with visual cognitive disability and without phonological disability. They are right-handed three boys and one girl from eight to twelve years old. They showed normal general intelligence, receptive vocabulary and phonological awareness according to the scores of Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children, Standardized Comprehension Test of Abstract Words, Picture Vocabulary Test revised, non-word repetition and word repetition in reverse order. In visual cognitive tasks, such as line drawings identification test, Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test (ROCFT), they manifested lower scores to compare with Chronological (CA) and Reading Age (RA) matched children as well as lower scores in the accuracy and fluency of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji reading and spelling tasks. They showed severer visual cognitive disability compared to children with developmental dyslexia who showed both of visual cognitive and phonological awareness disabilities, and only phonological disability. These results from four children suggested that severer visual cognitive disability alone could cause reading and spelling disability in Japanese writing system.