Variation of Characteristics of Reading and Writing Difficulties in Japanese Children with Learning Disabilities

Variation of Characteristics of Reading and Writing Difficulties in Japanese Children with Learning Disabilities Shino Ogawa (ogawa.shino.57n@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp) Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Kanrin, Inuyama-city, Aichi, Japan Miwa Fukushima-Murata (miwa.fukushima.murata@gmail.com) Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo 4-6-1, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan Namiko Kubo-Kawai (namikokk@asu.aasa.ac.jp) Faculty of Psychology, Aichi Shukutoku University 9, Katahira, Nagakute-cho, Aichi, Japan Tomoko Asai (t.asai.at@city.nagoya.lg.jp) Nagoya City Child Welfare Center 4-16 Orido-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya-city, Aichi, Japan Hiroko Taniai (h.taniai.67@city.nagoya.lg.jp) Department of Pediatrics, Nagoya Central Care Center for Disabled Children 4-16 Orido-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya-city, Aichi, Japan Nobuo Masataka (masataka.nobuo.7r@kyoto-u.ac.jp) Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Kanrin, Inuyama-city, Aichi, Japan Abstract There are conflicting hypotheses for the causes of Dyslexia in reading and writing difficulties, such as the phonological deficit hypothesis, double deficit hypothesis, magnocellular deficits hypothesis etc. The cause of the difficulties may vary between individuals. Moreover, most of these hypotheses consider only a single disability, despite the fact that factors related to reading and writing may affect the difficulty in various ways. We conducted this study to identify individual differences in the effect of Dyslexia. The participants were 12 Japanese children who were diagnosed with learning disabilities or suspected to be learning disabled. In this study, we considered how phonological awareness, visual perception, and phonological processing are related to reading and writing abilities in the Japanese language. In addition, we checked “handwriting ability.” This study shows that reading and writing difficulties are caused by a variety of factors and that there are individual differences in the difficulties. Keywords: Reading and writing Difficulties, Dyslexia, Individual differences, Japanese education Introduction In Japan, official reports claim that 6.3% of elementary and middle school students enrolled in normal classes experience learning difficulties (MEXT Japan, 2002). This means that each class has two or more students with actual or potential learning problems, making learning disabilities an issue that should be urgently addressed to provide these students with special learning assistance. Students with learning difficulties have more than one problem in reading, writing, listening, communicating, calculating, planning, and memorizing. In particular, support for reading and writing are very important. Difficulty with reading negatively affects all learning domains, thereby hindering academic performance in all subjects. A person’s inability to read well can also generate an inferiority complex that results in the loss of his or her motivation to learn, which, in turn, may be linked to symptoms leading to juvenile delinquency (Kimberly & Richard, 2006; Siponmaa, Kristiansson, Jonson, Nyden et al., 2001). The inability to read also influences friendships outside of the classroom (Stanovich, 1986) and children’s ability to process feelings of anger (Kazdin, Rodgers, Colbus, & Siegel, 1987; Moffitt & Henry, 1989). All of these factors suggest that addressing reading difficulties should be a priority for helping children with learning difficulties. To support them, it is important to know the causes of the difficulty. Moreover, there are different manifestations of developmental dyslexia in different languages (Miles, 2000). Researchers (e.g., Landerl, Wimmer & Frith, 1997; Paulesu, McCrory, Fazio, Menoncello et al., 2000; Paulesu, Demonet, Fazio, McCrory, 2001; Wydell & Butterworth, 1999) argue that the discrepancy in the prevalence of reading impairments in different languages might be primarily due to inherent differences in the structure/characteristics of each orthography, specifically the way in which phonology is computed from it. In the alphabetic languages in which a