This study aimed to clarify the relations between Kusyo behaviour and Kanji representations. In Experimet 1, 100 subjects (from school children to adults ; 5 age stages) engaged in the Kanji grapheme integration tasks which included 2 levels of difficulty. Results showed that the easy tasks were solved by only operating Kanji representations, indicating that motor imagery of writing was being internalized. In Experiment 2, subjects (same age stages) were presented the integration task which was free from the maintenance of the given graphemes. Kusyo behavior appeard less frequently among elementaly schoolers. In Experiment 3, subjects were required to recollect Kanjis which had a specific grapheme. The older subjects often used Kusyo to recollect the Kanjis especialy when their meanings did not inculde that of the grapheme. From these results, it was concluded that Kusyo was independent from the representations and to have its own functional roles.
