Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, which affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. It is a specific learning disability (SLD) as well as a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding and finger sequencing (the movement of muscles required to write). It often overlaps with other learning disabilities and neurodevelopmental disorders such as speech impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental coordination disorder (DCD).
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), dysgraphia is not mentioned. Dyslexia is characterized as a neurodevelopmental disorder under the umbrella category of specific learning disorder.
Dysgraphia should be distinguished from agraphia (sometimes called acquired dysgraphia), which is an acquired loss of the ability to write resulting from brain injury, progressive illness, or a stroke.
Etymology
The word dysgraphia comes from the Greek words dys meaning "impaired" and γραφία graphía meaning "writing by hand".
The condition can cause individuals to struggle with feedback and anticipating and exercising control over rhythm and timing throughout the writing process.
People with dysgraphia often write on some level and may experience difficulty with other activities requiring reciprocal movement of their fingers Accordingly, it has been found that adults, teenagers, and children alike are all subject to dysgraphia. Studies have shown that higher education students with developmental dysgraphia still experience significant difficulty with hand writing, fine motor skills and motor-related daily functions when compared to their peers without neurodevelopmental disorders.
Classification
Dysgraphia is nearly always accompanied by other learning disabilities and/or neurodevelopmental disorders such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD) and this can impact the type of dysgraphia a person has. Tourette syndrome, ASD and dyspraxia are also common diagnoses among dysgraphic individuals. but there are three principal subtypes of dysgraphia that are recognized.
Dyslexic
There are several features that distinguish dyslexic-dysgraphia (sometimes called linguistic dysgraphia) from the other types. People with dyslexic-dysgraphia typically have poor oral and written spelling that is typically phonemic in nature. Their spontaneously written work is often illegible, has extra or deleted syllables or letters, and contains unnecessary capitalization or large spaces in the middle of words which can make each individual word unrecognizable. They may also insert symbols that do not resemble any letter of the alphabet. Writing production generally requires long periods of contemplation and correction. Motor-dysgraphics struggle with proper finger grip and writing is often slanted due to holding a pen or pencil incorrectly.
Spatial
A person with spatial dysgraphia has an impairment in the understanding of space. This impaired spatial perception causes illegible spontaneously written work, illegible copied work, abnormal spacing between letters and majorly impaired drawing abilities. They have normal oral spelling and normal finger tapping speed, suggesting that this subtype is not fine motor based.
Dyscravia
In 2010, the Dyscravia or voicing substitution dysgraphia subtype was proposed. The subtype presents with differentiated voicing substitution, where individuals make mistakes when transferring from phonemes to graphemes (ie. "goat" would be mistakenly written as "coat"). Dyscravia does not appear to result from impairments in auditory processing or in speech production. It can occur with a completely intact graphemic buffer, phonological output lexicon, phonological output buffer, and allographic stage – the function that processes the voicing feature for writing may be selectively impaired without deficits in other functions of the conversion route. Dyscravia may or may not be accompanied by a parallel reading disability.
Miscellaneous
Other subtypes and informal classification systems have been proposed by researchers; this includes but is not limited to phonological dysgraphia, deep dysgraphia and surface dysgraphia.
- Handwriting abilities that interfere with spelling and written composition
- Struggles with translating ideas to writing, sometimes using the wrong words altogether
- Issues following rules of sentence structure or grammar when writing, but not when speaking
- Feeling pain while writing (eg; cramps in fingers, wrist and palms)
With devices like drawing tablets, it is now possible to measure the position, tilt, and pressure in real time. From these features, it is possible to compute automatic features like speed and shaking and train a classifier to diagnose automatically children with atypical writing.
It is not uncommon for dysgraphic individuals to be intellectually gifted, possess a rich vocabulary and have strong comprehension of language when speaking or reading, though their disorder is often not detected or treated; which may also be in part to developmental dyslexia receiving far more academic and medical attention than developmental dysgraphia. In addition, gifted children with transcription disabilities seldom receive programming for their intellectual talents due to their difficulties in completing written assignments.
School
There is no special education category for students with dysgraphia;
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 some teachers.