“Amusia” is defined as the impairment of musical abilities in patients with localized cerebral damages. This syndrome has been one of great interest among neuropsychologists. In order to assess various aspects of patients' musical abilities several comprehensive test batteries have been designed and introduced into clinical use. However, most of them are not appropriate for practical use because of numerous test items or items too difficult for patients who have never received special musical education. For further study of amusia, selected clinical cases and appropriate test batteries are needed.
In order to study disturbed musical abilities in patients with aphasia or auditory agnosia, the author used a questionnaire and the Seashore test. The results obtained demonstrated that in aphasic patients without auditory agnosia, some musical abilities including “listening”, “singing” or “playing instruments” were preserved.
This study suggests that use of music as one part of speech therapy for aphasic patients is of a great value and a promising topic for further study.

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Japanese case particles, such as ‘ga’ and ‘wo’ play a primary role in showing grammatical relationships in sentences. According to the studies on the acquisition of case particles, a time lag exists between production and comprehension of particles. In order to thoroughly investigate the acquisition process of Japanese particles, it seems preferable to examine children's speech production and comprehension concurrently. However, we find very few such comparative studies.
In this study, production and judgement of the case particles ‘ga’ and ‘wo’ in simple transitive sentences were investigated in an experimental cross-sectional study for 103 three to five year old subjects.
This study results in three findings: 1) ‘Ga’ in simple transitive sentences started to be used as an agent-marker at around 4 years. Then its use generalized to become a subject-marker and its grammatical function as found in adult grammar was acquired after 5 years. 2) Grammatical judgement of transitive sentences first made use of the SOV order of free words, sequential order of ‘ga’ ‘wo’, and grammatical function of those particles concurrently. After 5 years, children could predominantly use the grammatical function of case particles. 3) Production of particles preceeded judgement; self production of particles developed meta-linguistic ability, and grammatical judgement developed hereby.

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The cognitive development of 2 Down's syndrome children during the period of their early speech development was investigated using the Uzgiris-Hunt Ordinal Scales. In addition, the qualitative aspects of their early speech development were also studied. This research was carried out longitudinally from 13 months to 27 months of age for one of the Down's syndrome children, and from 15 months to 27 months for the other. The findings were compared with those of normal infants described by Saito (1988).
The results are as follows: 1) The first words of Down's syndrome children occurred several months later than the normals'. 2) A few quasi words appeared and then disappeared before their first words. 3) One of the subjects acquired a less declarative function words than the normal subjects, although his vocabulary increased well. 4) One subject showed more delayed speech development than the other. 5) “Vocal Imitation” and “Gestural Imitation” in the Uzgiris-Hunt Ordinal Scales developed more slowly in both of the Down's syndrome children than the normals. 6) The first words of Down's syndrome children appeared at the age of the same cognitive level as the normals.
This study suggests that articulation exercise, utilization of sign language intervention and categorization practice could be effective in the speech therapy for Down's syndrome infants.

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We have investigated the characteristic deficits in two cases of pure agraphia due to left parietal infarction. The patients were both right-handed males, 66 and 50 years of age, respectively. Study was made of the number of correct responses using the same words (for kanji) and the same letters (for kana) in repeated tests over 18 months. Analysis of the nature of the errors made in the writing of kanji and kana showed that: (1) there were deficits in the writing of both kanji and kana, both of which improved similarly over time. (2) The errors in response to kanji were often the production of non-existent kanji which were similar to actual kanji, whereas the errors in response to kana were often transpositions of the correct kana. Analysis of the errors showed that most responses to both kanji and kana were orthographically similar to the correct answer. These findings in two cases of pure agraphia due to parietal lesions suggest that, in addition to auditoryvisual disconnexion and auditory-somesthetic disconnexion, there are also deficits in the production of the appropriate writing movements from somesthetic images, that is, somesthetic-somatomotor disconnexion.

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A category-naming task was used to investigate aphasics' word-finding abilities. Aphasics (Broca's, Wernicke's, anomic) and normal controls were asked to provide a list of words within semantic categories (e. g., flower, bird). The analysis of the correct responses within each category showed the following results:
1) While the mean number of words aphasic group and aphasic sub-groups responded to was significantly lower than normals, no difference was found among aphasic sub-groups.
2) No difference in the ratio of the number of different words to all responses was found among aphasic sub-groups, and between aphasic sub-groups and normals.
3) In aphasic sub-groups and normals, the words which occurred with considerable frequency in all responses were similar to the words which occurred with considerable frequency in the first three words in order of response.
4) Among aphasic sub-groups, some of the same words were found in the words occurring with considerable frequency in all responses. Those same words were similar to the words occurring with considerable frequency in normals.
Taken together, these results suggest that the nature of the internal structure of semantic categories may be relatively common among aphasics, and between aphasics and normals.

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