ABSTRACT
A Japanese dyslexic patient exhibiting a selective impairment in reading kanji aloud was given a battery of reading tests, including oral reading of single words in kana and kanji, kana–syllable correspondence, lexical decision, and reading comprehension of single words in kana and kanji. With a few important exceptions, the pattern of impairment uncovered by the tests, as well as the underlying malfunctions inferred from the test findings, appeared to resemble those of “surface dyslexia,” a syndrome sometimes encountered among users of alphabetical scripts such as English and French. Distinctive characteristics of the Japanese patient included partially retained comprehension of words in kana as well as in kanji, and a substantial number of semantic errors in the oral reading of kanji.
