Dysgraphia
Encyclopedia
Dysgraphia is a deficiency in the ability to write primarily in terms of handwriting, but also in terms of coherence. It occurs regardless of the ability to read and is not due to intellectual impairment. Dysgraphia is a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding (orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

, the storing process of written words and processing the letters in those words), and finger sequencing (the movement of muscles required to write). Although it is not well known, dysgraphia is as one of the most common learning disabilities and it often overlaps with other learning disabilities such as speech impairment, attention deficit disorder, or developmental coordination disorder. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...

(DSM-IV), dysgraphia is characterized as a learning disability
Learning disability
Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...

 in the category of written expression when one’s writing skills are below those expected given a person’s age measured through intelligence and age appropriate education. The DSM is not clear in whether or not writing refers to only the motor skills involved in writing, or if it also includes orthographic skills and spelling. The word dysgraphia comes from the Latin words dys meaning "impaired" and graphia meaning "making letter forms by hand".

People with dysgraphia can often write on some level and may lack other fine motor
Fine motor skill
Fine motor skills are the coordination of small muscle movements which occur e.g., in the fingers, usually in coordination with the eyes. In application to motor skills of hands the term dexterity is commonly used....

 skills, for example they may find tasks such as tying shoes difficult, but it does not affect all fine motor skills. People with dysgraphia often have unusual difficulty with handwriting and spelling which in turn can cause writing fatigue. They may lack basic grammar and spelling skills (for example, having difficulties with the letters p, q, b, and d), and often will write the wrong word when trying to formulate their thoughts on paper. The disorder generally emerges when the child is first introduced to writing. Adults, teenagers, and children alike are all subject to dysgraphia.

Classification

Dysgraphia is often, but not always, accompanied by other learning disabilities such as dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...

 or attention deficit disorder, and this can impact the type of dysgraphia a person might have. There are three principal subtypes of dysgraphia that are recognized. There is little information available about different types of dysgraphia and there are likely more subtypes than the ones listed below. Some children may have a combination of two or more of these, and individual symptoms may vary in presentation from what is described here.

Dyslexic dysgraphia

People with dyslexic dysgraphia, have illegible spontaneously written work, their copied work is fairly good, but their spelling
Spelling
Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming the letters...

 is usually bad. Their finger tapping speed (a method for identifying fine motor problems) is normal, indicating that the deficit does not likely stem from cerebellar
Cerebellum
The cerebellum is a region of the brain that plays an important role in motor control. It may also be involved in some cognitive functions such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure responses, but its movement-related functions are the most solidly established...

 damage.

Motor dysgraphia

Motor dysgraphia is due to deficient fine motor skill
Fine motor skill
Fine motor skills are the coordination of small muscle movements which occur e.g., in the fingers, usually in coordination with the eyes. In application to motor skills of hands the term dexterity is commonly used....

s, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone
Muscle tone
In physiology, medicine, and anatomy, muscle tone is the continuous and passive partial contraction of the muscles, or the muscle’s resistance to passive stretch during resting state. It helps maintain posture, and it declines during REM sleep.-Purpose:Unconscious nerve impulses maintain the...

, or unspecified motor clumsiness. Letter formation may be acceptable in very short samples of writing, but this requires extreme effort and an unreasonable amount of time to accomplish, and it cannot be sustained for a significant length of time. Overall, their written work is poor to illegible even if copied by sight from another document, and drawing is difficult. Oral spelling for these individuals is normal, and their finger tapping speed is below normal. This shows that there are problems within the fine motor skills of these individuals. Writing is often slanted due to holding a pen or pencil incorrectly.

Spatial dysgraphia

A person with spatial dysgraphia has a defect in the understanding of space. They will have illegible spontaneously written work, illegible copied work, and problems with drawing abilities. They have normal spelling and normal finger tapping speed, suggesting that this subtype is not fine motor based.

Signs and symptoms

The symptoms to dysgraphia are often overlooked or attributed to the student being lazy, unmotivated, not caring, or having delayed visual-motor processing. In order to be diagnosed with dysgraphia, one must have a cluster, but not necessarily all, of the following symptoms:
  • Cramping of fingers while writing short entries
  • Odd wrist, arm, body, or paper orientations such as creating an L shape with your arm
  • Excessive erasures
  • Mixed upper case and lower case letters
  • Inconsistent form and size of letters, or unfinished letters
  • Misuse of lines and margins
  • Inefficient speed of copying
  • Inattentiveness over details when writing
  • Frequent need of verbal cues
  • Referring heavily on vision to write
  • Poor legibility
  • Handwriting abilities that may interfere with spelling and written composition
  • Having a hard time translating ideas to writing, sometimes using the wrong words altogether
  • May feel pain while writing


Students with dysgraphia are not unmotivated, their disability causes them emotional trauma often due to the fact that no one can read their writing and they are aware that they are not performing to the same level as their peers. Emotional problems that may occur alongside dysgraphia include impaired self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...

, lowered self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...

, heightened anxiety, and depression
Depression
Depression or depress may refer to:-Medicine:* Depression , a state of low mood and aversion to activity** Mood disorder, a class of mental illnesses featuring depressed mood...

. They may put in extra efforts in order to have the same achievements as their peers, but often get frustrated because they feel that their hard work does not pay off.

Dysgraphia is a hard disorder to detect as it does not affect specific ages, gender, or intelligence. The main concern in trying to detect dysgraphia is that people hide their disability behind their verbal fluency because they are ashamed that they cannot achieve the same goals as their peers. Having dysgraphia is not related to a lack of cognitive ability, and it is not uncommon in intellectually gifted individuals, but due to dysgraphia their intellectual abilities are often not identified.

Associated conditions

There are some common problems not related to dysgraphia but often associated with dysgraphia, the most common of which is stress. Often children (and adults) with dysgraphia will become extremely frustrated with the task of writing (and spelling); younger children may cry, pout, or refuse to complete written assignments. This frustration can cause the child (or adult) a great deal of stress and can lead to stress-related illnesses. This can be a result of any symptom of dysgraphia.

Causes

Dysgraphia is a biologically based disorder with genetic and brain bases. More specifically, it is a working memory
Working memory
Working memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...

 problem. In dysgraphia, individuals fail to develop normal connections among different brain regions needed for writing. People with dysgraphia have difficulty in automatically remembering and mastering the sequence of motor movements required to write letters or numbers. Dysgraphia is also in part due to underlying problems in orthographic coding, the orthographic loop, and graphmotor output (the movements that result in writing) by one’s hands, fingers and executive functions involved in letter writing. The orthographic loop is when written words are stored in the mind’s eye, connected through sequential finger movement for motor output through the hand with feedback from the eye.

Treatment

Treatment for dysgraphia varies and may include treatment for motor disorders to help control writing movements. The use of educational therapy
Educational Therapy
Educational Therapy is a form of therapy used to treat individuals with learning differences, disabilities, and challenges. This form of therapy offers a wide range of intensive interventions that are designed to remediate learning problems. These interventions are individualized and unique to the...

 can be effective in the classroom as long as teachers are well informed about dysgraphia. Other treatments may address impaired memory or other neurological problems. Some physicians recommend that individuals with dysgraphia use computers to avoid the problems of handwriting. Dysgraphia can be overcome with appropriate and conscious effort and training. The International Dyslexia Association suggests the use of kinesthetic memory through early training by having the child over learn how to write letters and to later practice writing with their eyes closed or averted to reinforce the feel of the letters being written. They also suggest teaching the students cursive writing as it has fewer reversible letters and can help lessen spacing problems, at least within words, because cursive letters are generally attached within a word.
Diagnosing dysgraphia can be challenging but can be done at facilities specializing in learning disabilities.It is suggested that those who believe they may have dysgraphia seek a qualified clinician to be tested. Clinicians will have the client self-generate written sentences and paragraphs, and copy age-appropriate text. They will assess the output of writing, as well as observe the clients posture while writing, their grip on the writing instrument, and will ask the client to either tap their finger or turn their wrists repeatedly to assess fine motor skills.

In the classroom

There is no special education category for students with dysgraphia, but in the United States 'The National Center for Learning Disabilities' suggests that children with dysgraphia be handled in a case by case manner with an Individualized Education Program
Individualized Education Program
In the United States an Individualized Education Program, commonly referred to as an IEP, is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act...

, or provide individual accommodation to provide alternative ways of submitting work and modify tasks to avoid the area of weakness. Students with dysgraphia often cannot complete written assignments that are legible, appropriate in length and content, or within given time. It is suggested that students with dysgraphia receive specialized instructions that are appropriate for them, this means that each set of instructions may be different for each child. Children will mostly benefit from explicit and comprehensive instructions, help translating across multiple levels of language, and review and revision of assignments or writing methods. Direct, explicit instruction on letter formation, and guided practice will help students achieve automatic handwriting performance before they use letters to write words, phrases, and sentences. Some older children may benefit from the use of a personal computer, or a laptop in class so that they do not have to deal with the frustration of falling behind their peers.

It is also suggested by Berninger that teachers with dysgraphic students decide if their focus will be on manuscript writing (printing), or keyboarding. In either case, it is beneficial that students are taught how to read cursive writing as it is used daily in classrooms by teachers. It may also be beneficial for the teacher to come up with other methods of assessing a child's knowledge other than written tests, an example would be oral testing. This causes less frustration for the child as they are able to get their knowledge across to the teacher without worrying how to write their thoughts.

The number of students with dysgraphia may increase from 4 percent of students in primary grades, due to the overall difficulty of handwriting, and up to 20 percent in middle school because written compositions become more complex. With this in mind, there are no exact numbers of how many individuals have dysgraphia due to its difficulty to diagnose. There are slight gender differences in association with written disabilities; overall it is found that males are more likely to be impaired with handwriting, composing, spelling, and orthographic abilities than females.

See also

  • Alexia without agraphia
    Alexia without agraphia
    Pure alexia is one form of alexia which makes up "the peripheral dyslexia" group. Individuals who have pure alexia suffer from severe reading problems while other language-related skills such as naming, oral repetition, auditory comprehension or writing are typically intact.Pure alexia is also...

  • Dyspraxia
    Dyspraxia
    Developmental dyspraxia is a motor learning difficulty that can affect planning of movements and co-ordination as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body...

  • Learning disability
    Learning disability
    Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...

  • Dyspraxia
  • Dyscravia
    Dyscravia
    Dyscravia is a voicing substitution dysgraphia, i.e., a type of writing disorder, in which the affected person confuses letters denoting sounds that differ in their voicing attribute...

  • Character amnesia
    Character amnesia
    Character amnesia is a phenomenon whereby experienced speakers of some East Asian languages forget how to write Chinese characters previously well known to them. The phenomenon is specifically tied to prolonged and extensive use of input methods, such as those that use romanizations of characters,...


External links

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