Neurolinguistic Aspects of the Japanese Writing System

Book excerpt: Neurolinguistic Aspects of the Japanese Writing System provides an account and an analysis of cases of dissociation between kana (syllabic) and kanji (ideographic) script in reading and/or writing. Organized into five chapters, this book begins by discussing the aspects of the Japanese writing system relevant to neurolinguistic research. Experimental kanji/kana processing studies and clinical case reports are then presented. This book also explains the clinical dissociations in performance between aspects of the writing system. This book will serve as a model for further studies in which a similarly detailed analysis is attempted of the neurolinguistic structure of other non-Western orthographies.