(from Greek, a: not, graphein: to write) Agraphia (or dysgraphia) is an acquired disorder of WRITING and/or SPELLING. It typically results from damage to the LANGUAGE areas of the dominant cerebral hemisphere. In peripheral dysgraphias, the impairment may be restricted to letter formation, such that the subject retains the ability to spell words orally. In central DYSGRAPHIC syndromes, spelling knowledge itself is affected.
The different patterns of central dysgraphia have been classified and named largely by analogy with similar patterns of ACQUIRED READING DISORDER. In SURFACE DYSGRAPHIA, atypical correspondences between a word’s sound and its spelling cause particular problems and result in regularization errors (for example spelling yacht as yot). In PHONOLOGICAL DYSGRAPHIA, familiar words—including those with atypical correspondences—may be spelled correctly, but the patient has problems spelling novel stimuli such as unfamiliar words and non-words. In DEEP DYSGRAPHIA, there is a severe deficit in generating plausible spellings of novel items, and the patient’s success with known words is modulated by word meaning: words with abstract meanings are particularly vulnerable, and even concrete, imageable words are subject to semantic errors such as yacht being transformed to ship.
Reference
Ellis A.W. (1993) Reading, Writing and Dyslexia, 2nd edn, Lawrence Erlbaum: Hove.
ELAINE FUNNELL AND KARALYN E.PATTERSON
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