Development of a Screening Test for the Early Identification of Japanese Children with Difficulties Learning English: A Preliminary Study.

Objectives: In Japan, there is no established method to assess the ability to read and write in English. To address this problem, we sought to develop a screening test for the early detection of students who show difficulties in reading and writing in English. Methods: The participants were 425 fifth- and sixth-grade elementary school students and 526 first- through third-grade junior high school students. While setting up the task items, we focused on the assessment of visual information processing ability related to letter-symbol information processing. Q1 was a letter identification task, Q2 was a letter recognition task, Q3 was a discrimination task, Q4 was a lexical decision task, Q5 was a semantic comprehension task, Q6 was a meaningful sentence copy task, and Q7 was a nonsensical sentence copy task. Q1 to Q5 assessed reading ability and Q6 and Q7 assessed writing ability. Results: The comparison of basic distribution between elementary and junior high school showed that there were differences in the distribution of both reading and writing scores between the two school types (P<0.05). At the cut-off value of -1.5 SD, 7.8% of the students were extracted for reading scores and 4.2%-5.5% for writing scores. Conclusions: The extraction rate of students using this screening test supports the results of previously published studies. Thus, this screening test is considered suitable for identifying elementary and junior high school students who face difficulties in reading and writing in English.

The influence of intelligence and cognitive abilities on the reading ability of Japanese students with developmental disorders.

OBJECTIVE: We examined the differences in reading skills between Japanese students with developmental dyslexia (DD) having developmental disorders who had borderline IQ (BIQ) and those who had normal IQ (NIQ), and the influence of cognitive factors through subscale scores of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition on the reading skills of all students with DD having developmental disorders. METHODS: One-way analysis of variance revealed differences in reading scores among the four groups (DD with NIQ, DD with BIQ, as well as non-DD with NIQ and non-DD with BIQ as control groups). To examine the influence of cognitive factors, we used multiple regression analysis for all participants, and then for participants with DD. RESULTS: Regarding hiragana nonword fluency reading, no difference was observed between the two DD groups, and cognitive factors did not affect the performance of all participants with DD. Concerning hiragana word fluency reading, DD with NIQ group performed better than DD group with BIQ, and working memory index affected reading skills of participants with DD. Regarding kanji accuracy reading, DD with NIQ group performed better than DD with BIQ group, and processing speed index affected performance of participants with DD. CONCLUSIONS: The results of hiragana reading suggest that the two DD groups shared similar weak sub-lexical route processing, while the acquisition of lexical route processing was hindered by lower IQ and weak phonological working memory in transparent phonographic hiragana reading. For kanji reading, lower IQ and weak visuomotor processing ability hampered the learning of visually complex logographic kanji characters.

Reliability and validity of the upper-body dressing scale in Japanese patients with vascular dementia with hemiparesis.

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Upper-body Dressing Scale (UBDS) for buttoned shirt dressing, which evaluates the learning process of new component actions of upper-body dressing in patients diagnosed with dementia and hemiparesis. This was a preliminary correlational study of concurrent validity and reliability in which 10 vascular dementia patients with hemiparesis were enrolled and assessed repeatedly by six occupational therapists by means of the UBDS and the dressing item of the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.97 for intra-rater reliability and 0.99 for inter-rater reliability. The level of correlation between UBDS score and FIM dressing item scores was -0.93. UBDS scores for paralytic hand passed into the sleeve and sleeve pulled up beyond the shoulder joint were worse than the scores for the other components of the task. The UBDS has good reliability and validity for vascular dementia patients with hemiparesis. Further research is needed to investigate the relation between UBDS score and the effect of intervention and to clarify sensitivity or responsiveness of the scale to clinical change.

Induction of cortical plasticity for reciprocal muscles by paired associative stimulation.

BACKGROUND: Paired associative stimulation (PAS) is widely used to induce plasticity in the human motor cortex. Although reciprocal inhibition of antagonist muscles plays a fundamental role in human movements, change in cortical circuits for reciprocal muscles by PAS is unknown. METHODS: We investigated change in cortical plasticity for reciprocal muscles during PAS. PAS consisted of 200 pairs of peripheral electric stimulation of the right median nerve at the wrist at a frequency of 0.25 Hz followed by transcranial magnetic stimulation of the left M1 at the midpoint between the center of gravities of the flexor carpi radialis (FCR) and extensor carpi radialis (ECR) muscles. Measures of motor cortical excitability included resting motor threshold (RMT), GABAA-mediated short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI), and GABAB-mediated long-interval intracortical inhibition (LICI). RESULTS: Motor evoked potential amplitude-conditioned LICI for the FCR muscle was significantly decreased after PAS (P = 0.020), whereas that for the ECR muscle was significantly increased (P = 0.033). Changes in RMT and SICI for the FCR and ECR muscles were not significantly different before and after PAS. Corticospinal excitability for both reciprocal muscles was increased during PAS, but GABAB-mediated cortical inhibitory functions for the agonist and antagonist muscles were reciprocally altered after PAS. CONCLUSION: These results implied that the cortical excitability for reciprocal muscles including GABAB-ergic inhibitory systems within human M1 could be differently altered by PAS.

Syntactic comprehension in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Recent neuropsychological studies of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have demonstrated that some patients have aphasic symptoms, including impaired syntactic comprehension. However, it is not known if syntactic comprehension disorder is related to executive and visuospatial dysfunction. In this study, we evaluated syntactic comprehension using the Syntax Test for Aphasia (STA) auditory comprehension task, frontal executive function using the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), visuospatial function using Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM), and dementia using the Hasegawa Dementia Scale-Revised (HDS-R) in 25 patients with ALS. Of the 25 patients, 18 (72%) had syntactic comprehension disorder (STA score < IV), nine (36%) had frontal executive dysfunction (FAB score < 14), six (24%) had visuospatial dysfunction (RCPM score < 24), and none had dementia (HDS-R score < 20). Nine of the 18 patients with syntactic comprehension disorder (50%) passed the FAB and RCPM. Although sample size was small, these patients had a low STA score but normal FAB and RCPM score. All patients with bulbar onset ALS had syntactic comprehension disorder. These results indicate that it might be necessary to assess syntactic comprehension in patients with bulbar onset ALS. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the pathological continuum of ALS.

A Japanese short form of the Swanson Cognitive Processing Test to measure working memory: reliability, validity, and differences in scores between primary school children of the United States and Japan.

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of a Japanese short form of the Swanson Cognitive Processing Test, which assesses capacity of working memory. Test-retest reliability was acceptable (r = .76). Concurrent validity was suggested through comparison of scores on the Reading Span Task (r = .55). Means on the Japanese short form were comparable with means for the 3 subtests for the older group and 2 subtests for the younger group. With the exception of the Auditory Digit Sequence, results suggested that both the Japanese short form and the initial Swanson Cognitive Processing Test measured comparably the working memory in the two samples of children.