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Background: In recent years, cases of dystextia (texting disabilities) and dystypia (typing disabilities) have been reported. However, reports describing isolated dystextia without aphasia or other cognitive impairments are rare, and the detailed pathophysiology is not fully understood. Most Japanese people use the alphabetical spelling system (Romaji) for texting and typing. Herein, we report the case of a man with isolated dystextia and dystypia resulting from Romaji conversion difficulties. Case presentation: A 48-year-old, right-handed Japanese man developed texting and typing difficulties. The standard neuropsychological tests showed no signs of aphasia or other cognitive impairments, except for slight executive dysfunction. Thus, isolated dystextia and dystypia were diagnosed. Furthermore, the patient experienced Romaji conversion difficulties. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a subcortical infarction in the left cerebral hemisphere. Single photon emission tomography revealed hypoperfusion, including in the left dorsolateral frontal cortex. Conclusions: The left dorsolateral frontal cortex may be related to Romaji conversion in Japanese individuals. Therefore, diaschisis of the left dorsolateral frontal cortex due to subcortical lesions may have impaired Romaji conversion, leading to dystextia and dystypia, in this patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background In recent years, cases of dystextia (texting disabilities) and dystypia (typing disabilities) have been reported. However, reports describing isolated dystextia without aphasia or other cognitive impairments are rare, and the detailed pathophysiology is not fully understood. Most Japanese people use the alphabetical spelling system (Romaji) for texting and typing. Herein, we report the case of a man with isolated dystextia and dystypia resulting from Romaji conversion difficulties. Case presentation A 48-year-old, right-handed Japanese man developed texting and typing difficulties. The standard neuropsychological tests showed no signs of aphasia or other cognitive impairments, except for slight executive dysfunction. Thus, isolated dystextia and dystypia were diagnosed. Furthermore, the patient experienced Romaji conversion difficulties. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a subcortical infarction in the left cerebral hemisphere. Single photon emission tomography revealed hypoperfusion, including in the left dorsolateral frontal cortex. Conclusions The left dorsolateral frontal cortex may be related to Romaji conversion in Japanese individuals. Therefore, diaschisis of the left dorsolateral frontal cortex due to subcortical lesions may have impaired Romaji conversion, leading to dystextia and dystypia, in this patient.

In attempting to understand mental processes, it is important to use a task that appropriately reflects the underlying processes being investigated. Recently, Verdonschot and Kinoshita (Memory & Cognition, 46, 410–425, 2018) proposed that a variant of the Stroop task—the "phonological Stroop task"—might be a suitable tool for investigating speech production. The major advantage of this task is that the task is apparently not affected by the orthographic properties of the stimuli, unlike other, commonly used, tasks (e.g., associative-cuing and word-reading tasks). The viability of this proposal was examined in the present experiments by manipulating the script types of Japanese distractors. For Romaji distractors (e.g., "kushi"), color-naming responses were faster when the initial phoneme was shared between the color name and the distractor than when the initial phonemes were different, thereby showing a phoneme-based phonological Stroop effect (Experiment 1). In contrast, no such effect was observed when the same distractors were presented in Katakana (e.g., "くし"), replicating Verdonschot and Kinoshita's original results (Experiment 2). A phoneme-based effect was again found when the Katakana distractors used in Verdonschot and Kinoshita's original study were transcribed and presented in Romaji (Experiment 3). Because the observation of a phonemic effect directly depended on the orthographic properties of the distractor stimuli, we conclude that the phonological Stroop task is also susceptible to orthographic influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The Japanese writing system employs two categories of characters: Kana and Kanji. [•] Another writing system called ‘Romaji’ uses alphabetical characters in Japan. [•] This ‘Romaji’ system is based purely on phonological rules. [•] We reported a right-handed Japanese patient with pure agraphia in Romaji. [•] The patient had a confined small lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The morpho-syllabic Japanese writing system consists of the phonetic scripts of hiragana and katakana, the logographic kanji derived from Chinese characters and the less well researched romaji based on the Roman alphabet. In four experiments we investigated the speed with which Japanese college students read, named, and transcribed romaji as compared with hiragana. We examined these college students’ proficiency in transcribing isolated words in Experiments 1 and 2, their oral reading speeds at the text level in Experiment 3, and naming latencies for syllables in Experiment 4. The results taken together showed that while transcription speed was almost comparable between romaji and hiragana, reading speed was much slower in romaji than in hiragana. It is suggested that this dissociation can arise mainly from differential reading and writing experiences in romaji among Japanese people. Both theoretical and practical implications are drawn for the future of romaji as the putative fourth script in the Japanese writing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]