Differential confrontation-naming performance associated with Kanji or Kana representation in a single Broca’s aphasia case

This study centers on a 44-year-old right-handed Japanese male with moderate Broca's aphasia. During a confrontation-naming task (CNT) during therapy, the person expressed that it was "easier to speak when I recall (in my mind) the Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) characters." To investigate this claim and its relationship to language impairment, this study sought to determine the effect of character type on the CNT, focusing on the person's perceived difference between Kanji and Katakana. We selected pictures corresponding to highly orthographically plausible Kanji and Katakana (more appropriate for comparison than Hiragana) words for CNT and oral reading tasks that the patient performed. The results revealed more correct responses in CNT in the Katakana stimulus group than in the Kanji one; the latency in oral reading was shorter in the Katakana group as well. The results suggest that words written in Katakana have a better naming performance than those in Kanji because of the influence of the characters as represented in the mental imagery of Katakana. A possible reason for this is that, for our respondent, Katakana is more likely to activate phonological information than Kanji. Additionally, the writing and reading training for confrontation-naming may have implicitly influenced the tasks.