Katakana Training for a Hearing-Impaired Child with Katakana Writing Difficulties

Abstract

A girl with Katakana dyslexia combined with mild hearing impairment was administered a training method using good verbal memory. She demonstrated fair phonological long-term memory despite her poor phonological awareness, showing a cognitive profile similar to the profiles of developmental dyslexia cases without hearing impairment. After confirming her willingness, Katakana training was conducted according to the auditory method previously reported for developmental dyslexia cases. Her hand-writing of 46 consecutively presented and randomly presented one-mora words was evaluated before and after the training. The correct writing rate significantly improved both in the consecutively presented moras (34 before training to 46 after training; P<0.01) and in the randomly presented moras (80 before training to 101 after training; P<0.01). As long as long-term verbal memory is maintained, bypass training can be adapted to dyslexic cases with hearing impairment.