失語症訓練と文字

Aphasia therapy and Japanese characters: Kanji and Kana

　筆者はかつて記した論文において，失語症の改善を目指す読みのアプローチとして，漢字を媒体として語義へと，そして仮名を介して音(語彙音韻表象)へと結びつけることにより，文字・意味・音韻の表象を連合し，「語彙」を成立させることの意義を述べたことがある．今回は，さらに日本語の文字の特性を失語症臨床に活かすための基本的事項を概説し，当院での実践例を詳しく紹介した．

　Previously we proposed in our paper that Kana should be used more actively for aphasia therapy, as part of any reading-based approach, because we found it to be effective in connecting Kanji to word meaning and Kana to phonological representations, which in turn helps an individual to associate representations of grapheme, meaning, and phoneme to compose a "lexicon." In this paper we introduce, in detail, a variety of therapies using Japanese characters for auditory comprehension, speech production, and phonological training, conducted in our practice.