Current Issues in Neuropsychological Assessment in Japan

Since the majority of neuropsychological studies have been conducted with patients whose mother tongue is one of the major European languages, neuropsychological studies of Japanese-speaking patients may provide unique insights. Among the differences between Japanese and the major European languages, those of syntax and orthography are the most prominent. The most remarkable grammatical structure of the Japanese language is its word order (Subject-Object-Verb). This unique syntactical feature is reflected in the error patterns of Japanese aphasic patients. As to the Japanese orthography, two different types of writing systems are used in combination, i.e., the kana systems and the kanji system. Clinical syndromes such as pure alexia, surface dyslexia, or constructional agraphia provide rich examples of neuropsychological problems specific to the Japanese orthography. In this chapter, the authors propose that investigation of problems specific to the Japanese language will also lead to understanding language-independent universal neuropsychological problems.