Abstract
The purpose of this study was to analyze the relation between the attributes of each Kanji character (number of years studied, number of strokes, regularity, hieroglyphicity, frequency of use) and Kanji writing performance in low vision and normal vision children. Subjects were 87 normal and 54 low vision children in the 6th grade. Writing tests were composed of 100 Kanji characters, The 2nd-grade children had a test of 20 Kanji characters that they must learn at the 1st-grade. The 3rd-grade children had a test of a total of 40 of the 1st and 2nd. Similarly, the 4th-grade children were tested on 60 characters, the 5th-grade children on 80, and the 6th-grade children on 100. Answers were scored in three categories: correct, wrong and no answer. Results were as follows: 1. For the low vision children, the correlation between each of the five attributes of Kanji characters and the percentage of characters that were written correctly was at least 0.40 for all attributes. 2. For the normal vision children, the corresponding correlations were at least 0.40 on all attributes except frequency of use. 3. The partial correlation coefficients for each of the five attributes with kanji-writing performance were calculated after controlling for the effects of the remaining four attributes by controlling the effects of other 4 factors. Number of years studied was correlated with writing performance in both low and normal vision children. In addition, the regularity of the Kanji was correlated slightly with writing performarce in the low vision children in low vision children. This result was also comfirmed by multiple regression analysis.
