Persistent left unilateral mirror writing: A neuropsychological case study

Angelillo, Valentina; Lucia, Natascia De; Trojano, Luigi; Grossi, Dario

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2010.04.003

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This review of research led the authors of the paper to propose a possible unified explanation for mirror writing in both pathological adults and typically developing young children, which they labelled the "directional apraxia theory". However, finding that children do not display adult-like mirror discrimination of letters indirectly weakens the idea that a single theory can explain character reversal in both adults and children [11], and the results of neurological studies [12,13] directly challenge the validity of the theory.…”

Section: Of 16mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Fischer

Luxembourger

2018

Education Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ∃ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character's orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters' shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture. Introduction: Historical BackgroundCharacter reversal, which results in left-right reversed characters (letters and digits) that appear normal when read in a mirror, is a major component of mirror writing. In the scientific literature, it was first described in 1878 by Buchwald, who reported several cases of character reversal in writing by patients with brain lesions and by healthy individuals, most notably children, nearly all of whom wrote with their left hand [1]. This pioneering study launched a new field of research and triggered numerous reports of mirror writing by both pathological and non-pathological individuals. Less felicitously, Buchwald's implicit suggestion that mirror writing was restricted to people who wrote with their left hand, whether naturally or deliberately, would cloud research for over a century.Erlenmeyer immediately included Buchwald's paper in his book on "Writing", quoting at length the paragraph describing children who mirror wrote with their left hand, but, when alerted to the incorrectness of their writing, wrote correctly with their right hand [2]. Furthermore, by suggesting "abductive left-hand writing" (linkshändige Abductionsschrift in German) as a more appropriate name for "mirror writing", Erlenmeyer reduced mirror writing to a mechanistic result of writing with the left hand: Characters and words are reversed when an individual writes abductively (outwards from the body midline) with the left hand.

show abstract

Section: Of 16mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Fischer

Luxembourger

2018

Education Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This was clearly the case (see also the following section) and therefore corroborates a major component of both Della Sala and Cubelli's and Dehaene's neuropsychological theories. However, other aspects of these theories, such as the claims that mirror writing should be "the most overt symptom of a widespread, high-order deficit encompassing all tasks requiring a learned, specific motor direction" (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007, p. 20), cannot be directly discussed on the basis of the present experiments because we studied only one type of material (for a more direct approach on a neuropsychological adult case, see Angelillo et al, 2010). Nevertheless, the clear difference between writing and copying in Experiment 1a and the low correlation between character and name mirror writing in Experiment 2 indirectly suggest that mirror writing is not a general deficit affecting some children and not others.…”

Section: Theoretical Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All the studies we were able to find focused on different subjects and/or used different materials. For example, Angelillo, De Lucia, Trojano, and Grossi (2010) analyzed mirror writings produced by a left-handed patient after a hemorrhagic stroke in the left nucleo-capsular region. The patient mirror wrote under dictation with his left hand (only), in both the right and left hemispaces.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the mystery of mirror writing in typically developing children.

Fischer¹,

Tazouti²

2012

Journal of Educational Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most studies of mirror writing have focused on specific populations (e.g., pathological cases) or conditions (e.g., right-handed individuals writing with their left hand); hence, many simple questions about mirror writing in typically developing 5-year-old children remain unanswered. The present study addresses 2 simple but important issues conceming the relation between (a) mirror copying single characters (digits and capital letters) and mirror writing the same characters from memory and (b) mirror writing single characters and mirror writing whole words (e.g., 1st name). To shed light on these issues, the authors carried out 3 experimental studies of children at écoles matemelles in France. The results offer new insights into the phenomenon of mirror writing. A copying task generated considerably fewer mirror writings than a writing-from-memory task, and there was a significant but weak correlation (r^ = .22) between single-character mirror writing and name mirror writing. Academic level correlated positively with the mirror writing of characters (rj = .15); however, it correlated more positively with correct writing (r^ = .32) and negatively with no (or other incorrect) writing (r^ = -.45). This suggests that the mirror writings may occur (depending on the context) between some other incorrect writings (or absence of writing) and correct writings in the development of almost all children. In addition, contextual or situational factors, such as the preceding writing or the position of the writing on the page, had a much stronger infiuence on mirror writing than individual factors, such as writing hand or gender. German articles on mirror writing. However, in recent decades, mirror writing has been discussed only spasmodically (Ellis, 1988), and most research has focused on pathological cases, specific populations, left-handed persons, or children with leaming disabilities. Consequently, many simple but fundamental issues about the normal development of mirror writing remain unresolved, including the relationships between tnirror copying single characters (digits and capital letters) and mirror writing the same characters from memory and between mirror writing single characters and mirror writing whole words (e.g., first name). The The authors thank M.-B. Parisot, an experienced primary school teacher who served as second judge in the coding of the writings of Experiments la and 2, and O. Bartlett, A. Breton, C. Martignon, and M. Traore, who tested the children and coded the writings in Experiment lb. We are also grateful to the participating children, parents, teachers, directors, educational advisers, and education inspectors for their cooperation.

show abstract

“…Mirror writing refers to the production of words or individual letters in the reverse direction (Gaddes, 1980;Lebrun, Devreux, & Leleux, 1989). Mirror writing has been reported among young children who are beginning learners of writing (Cornell, 1985;Cubelli & Della Sala, 2009) and children with developmental writing difficulties (Wang, 1986), as well as brain-injured patients (Angelillo, Lucia, Trojano, & Grossi, 2010;Balfour, Borthwick, Cubelli, & Della Sala, 2007;Rodriguez, Aguilar, & Gonzalez, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representations of grapho-motor patterns unique to Chinese character writing: evidence from a patient with mirror writing

Lau

Yuen

2019

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study investigated the grapho-motor patterns used in writing Chinese characters. A Chinese patient, CSC, who demonstrated post-brain-injury mirror writing, was recruited. In Experiment 1, non-mirrored writing responses were obtained when CSC was instructed to copy asymmetrical non-verbal symbols and pictures. Resembling the patterns observed in a patient's writing reported in a previous study, it was hypothesized that CSC's mirror writing was a result of untransformed preserved grapho-motor patterns. In Experiments 2 and 3, CSC was further instructed to copy real Chinese characters, pseudo-characters with authentic radicals and logographemes (i.e., stroke clusters that frequently occur in radicals), and Hangul characters with stroke clusters resembling the shapes of authentic logographemes. The results showed that CSC demonstrated mirror writing only when authentic Chinese orthographic units were involved. Non-mirrored writing responses were obtained from stimuli without authentic Chinese orthographic units. In sum, CSC's performance supported the existence of grapho-motor patterns of Chinese orthographic units represented in the brain. Theoretical implications were discussed.

show abstract

Persistent left unilateral mirror writing: A neuropsychological case study

Cited by 6 publications

References 33 publications

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Unraveling the mystery of mirror writing in typically developing children.

Representations of grapho-motor patterns unique to Chinese character writing: evidence from a patient with mirror writing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About