**1. Introduction**

This chapter describes our new reading and writing tests which were designed to evaluate not only the severity of the language-related problem of each child, but also what types of impairments each child is experiencing, namely, whether a given child has an impairment which is mainly in the visual sphere, especially in the orthographical processing or in the phonological processing, on the basis of the psychological models concerning the development of reading and writing abilities. It also includes tentative reports on the experiment that we have conducted in order to ascertain the validity of those tests.

The aim of our study was to design a new set of achievement tests in reading and writing for Japanese-speaking children that will help us identify the specific types of learning problems that some children might be facing and would be useful in determining what types of intervention each child needs. One of the more central goals of our tests was to distinguish dyslexic children and children who are having language-related problems as a result of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD and dyslexia, the two most commonly diagnosed psychiatric conditions of childhood, each occur in approximately 5% (ADHD 3-7% and dyslexia 4%) of the population in the United States, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Forth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) (American Psychiatric Association 2000; Willcutt et al. 2005). Though ADHD and dyslexia are separate and distinct conditions, there is considerable overlap and children with ADHD often display language-related problems similar to those caused by dyslexia (Mason and Reid 2011). In order to give appropriate intervention to children with each disability, we need to be able to distinguish the characteristics of the linguistic problems that each condition entails.

What distinguishes our tests from previous test batteries for diagnosing language-related difficulties among Japanese children ((Uno et al. 2006) among others) is that our tests consist of several distinct categories of questions, so that it will be possible to pinpoint the exact

Assessing Orthographical and Phonological Impairments 71

character 言 ('speech, language') is learned in Grade 2 with a Kun/Japanese reading *i*; then it is learned in Grade 3 with a Kun/Japanese reading *koto*; it is also learned in Grade 4 with an On/Chinese reading *gen* and it is learned in Grade 6 with an On/Chinese reading *gon* (Synthetic Research Institute of Elementary Education 2005; Taylor and Taylor 1995). The number of characters which are taught with a new pronunciation increases from about 40 at

Unlike other tests, our tests take advantage of these features of the use and education of Chinese characters in Japan to obtain a detailed profile of the test-taker's ability to read and write. On the one hand, by using both questions involving characters written with a relatively small number of strokes and questions involving characters written with a relatively large number of strokes, we attempted to determine if the test-taker has any difficulty with dealing with visually complex symbols. On the other hand, by using both questions involving characters for which a different pronunciation has been taught before and questions involving characters for which no other pronunciation has been taught before, we attempted to gain insight as to whether the test-taker has any difficulty with

The content of our new tests and the way they were administered to ascertain their validity

In this experiment, participants were asked to read and write Chinese characters that were orthographically and phonologically either complex or simple. Orthographically complex characters are ones that are written with a relatively large number of strokes and orthographically simple characters are ones that are written with a relatively small number of strokes. More specifically, in the tests for second and third graders, the test for fourth graders and the tests for fifth and sixth graders, the orthographically complex characters consisted of approximately six strokes, 11 strokes and 12 strokes respectively on average and orthographically simple characters consisted of approximately three strokes, five strokes and six strokes respectively on average. Phonologically complex characters are ones for which the child (the participant) is expected to have already learned at school more than one pronunciation and phonologically simple characters are ones for which the child (the participant) is expected to have already learned at school only one pronunciation. In other words, participants were asked to read and write Chinese characters which fell into one of

i. characters that consist of a small number of strokes and have only one pronunciation,

iii. characters that consist of a small number of strokes and have more than one

All the words in the achievement tests had been taught at school for at least more than a year before the test, except those used in the tests for Grade 2 children. All the words consist

ii. characters that consist of many strokes and have only one pronunciation,

iv. characters that consist of many strokes and have more than one pronunciation.

Grade 1 to about 200 by Grade 6.

phonological processing.

are presented in this section.

the following four categories:

pronunciation and

**2. Methods** 

**2.1 Material** 

aspects of reading and writing that a given child is having a problem with. Previous achievement tests in reading and writing were designed to detect children having difficulty with reading and writing, and to diagnose the magnitude of the difficulty. Consequently those tests did not allow for construction of a detailed profile of each child's disability.

More specifically, the most important feature of our new tests is that they consist of questions that are more suited to assessing a child's ability in phonological processing and questions that are more suited to assessing a child's ability in orthographic processing. Over the past decade, a growing body of research has shown that reading and writing involve orthographic processing and phonological processing both in alphabetical and in nonalphabetical languages (Afonso and Alvarez 2011; Kandel et al. 2009; Mousikou et al. 2010; Qu et al. 2011). Moreover, a longitudinal developmental study showed that both orthographical and phonological skills accounted for independent variance in later orthographic skills (Sprenger-Charolles et al. 2003). It has been also suggested that both the orthographic and phonological measures contribute to distinguishing various types of dyslexia (Berninger et al. 2008; Coltheart et al. 2001; Hultquist 1997; Plaut et al. 1996); although dyslexia has been strongly associated with a deficit in phonological processing (Ramus et al. 2003; Shaywitz and Shaywitz 2005), reading disabilities may also be linked to problems with orthographic processing. We thus incorporated both orthographical and phonological measures into our reading and writing tests, with the expectation that their inclusion might help us distinguish not only various types of dyslexia but also dyslexia and ADHD.

To state the advantage of our tests in this regard in a more precise fashion, let us go into some details about the way Chinese characters are used in the Japanese language and the way they are taught at Japanese schools. The way Chinese characters are used in Japan is uniquely complicated, even compared to the way they are used in other Asian countries, such as China and Korea (Taylor and Taylor 1995). Whereas the relation between *Kana*, Japanese syllabary, and sounds is relatively transparent, the relation between *Kanji*, Chinese characters used in Japan, and sounds is sometimes opaque and not transparent. While in Chinese each Chinese character corresponds only to one sound in principle, most Chinese characters used in Japanese have two or more pronunciations, which are classified into On/Chinese pronunciations, which reflect the pronunciations that the characters originally had in Chinese, and Kun/Japanese pronunciations, which are sounds representing the Japanese morphemes that are felt to semantically correspond to the meaning of the Chinese characters. The pronunciation of a Chinese character used in a Japanese text often cannot be determined unless the context in which it is used is taken into account.

About a thousand Chinese characters, which are roughly half of the Chinese characters that are commonly used among adults (Jo-yo Kanji), are taught at primary school in Japan, i.e. during Grade 1 through to Grade 6. Children in Grade 1 are taught 80 Chinese characters, those in Grade 2 are taught 160 and those in Grade 3 through to Grade 6 are taught about 200 in each academic year. The average number of strokes of a single character taught at each grade increases from about 5 strokes at Grade 1 to about 11 strokes by Grade 5, which corresponds to almost the same average number of strokes of one character in Jo-yo Kanji used among adults. When Japanese children of each grade are taught a fixed set of Chinese characters, they are typically taught only one of the possible pronunciations of those characters at first; more frequently used, thus more important pronunciations, are taught at earlier grades and other pronunciations are taught at later grades. For example, the Chinese character 言 ('speech, language') is learned in Grade 2 with a Kun/Japanese reading *i*; then it is learned in Grade 3 with a Kun/Japanese reading *koto*; it is also learned in Grade 4 with an On/Chinese reading *gen* and it is learned in Grade 6 with an On/Chinese reading *gon* (Synthetic Research Institute of Elementary Education 2005; Taylor and Taylor 1995). The number of characters which are taught with a new pronunciation increases from about 40 at Grade 1 to about 200 by Grade 6.

Unlike other tests, our tests take advantage of these features of the use and education of Chinese characters in Japan to obtain a detailed profile of the test-taker's ability to read and write. On the one hand, by using both questions involving characters written with a relatively small number of strokes and questions involving characters written with a relatively large number of strokes, we attempted to determine if the test-taker has any difficulty with dealing with visually complex symbols. On the other hand, by using both questions involving characters for which a different pronunciation has been taught before and questions involving characters for which no other pronunciation has been taught before, we attempted to gain insight as to whether the test-taker has any difficulty with phonological processing.
