2019 Volume 39 Issue 4 Pages 421-428
We examined a 45-year-old right-handed man whose major complaint was that his typing speed had reduced after a left thalamic hemorrhage. He did not show any symptoms of aphasia, apraxia, or agnosia. His general intellectual functioning was normal, apart from a decrease in his processing speed. We conducted assessments of his phonological manipulation, writing, and typing abilities two months after the onset. When entering Japanese into PC, we need to convert Japanese phonetics to kana letters and kana letters to Roman letters, however the process varies depending on the proficiency of Roman letter writing and typing. These assessments showed that his performance on the phonological manipulation, dictation of kana, and conversion of kana characters to Roman letter was better than that of Roman letter dictation. He had a tendency to make mistakes in oral reading of Roman letters. Due to retardation of bidirectional processing process between phonological representation and Roman letters representation, mild typing impairment was observed. The fact that his typing ability was better than his Roman letter writing might be due to preserved procedural memory that he was able to use when converting phonological representations directly to kinetic engrams.
