Abstract
Developmental phonological dyslexia is assumed to be caused by the delayed development of phonological awareness in the English speaking countries. Its incidence is reported to be as high as about 10% of the population.
Four cases of developmental phonological dyslexia, observed from their early primary school ages to middle school ages or adolescence were presented. The characteristics of their hiragana, kanji and alphabet learning were discussed and error analyses of reading and writing of these three characters were made. It was suggested that the underlying problems causing dyslexia in these 4 cases were, firstly, the dysfunction of coding between orthography and phonology and, secondly, the delayd development of phonological awareness. It seemed that, for the hiragana and kanji learning coding dysfunction was the most influential, while for the alphabet learning, the delayed development of phonological awareness was.
It was also discussed that the most effective intervention strategy in learning hiragana and kanji for these 4 cases was to let them acquire the learning strategy of transferring orthography to and phonology or vice versa via meaning.
