Abstract
We administered two training programs for Kana (phonemic letter) writing to a case of agraphia who manifested a severe disturbance in Kana writing in spite of only slight disturbance in her Kanji (ideographic letter) system.
In one training program the subject was required only to copy Kana letters. In the other, which we called the “Key word method” she was required to form a paired association between a Kana letter and a Kanji letter having the same sound in the first syllable as the coupled Kana. We compared the two training programs by means of single-subject experimental design, and discussed differences in efficacy as well as the psycholinguistic mechanism of disturbance in the Kana writing of this case.
Results indicated that the efficacy of copy training was restricted to the period of the experiment, but the efficacy of the "Key word method" lasted after the experiment and functioned as a selfgenerated cue.
The “Key word method” was thought to be a strategy which facilitates retrieval of Kana letters by way of information processing of the Kanji system, which was comparatively preserved in this case.
The fact that the intervention which used as a bypass route the information processing route comparatively preserved was more efficient than direct intervention to the information processing route severely disturbed indicates that in this case, the difficulty in retrieval of Kana letters was not a breakdown in the “engram” of the Kana grapheme, but disturbance of the “"access route” to the engram.
