Dysgraphic definition, types, causes, treatment and examples

Dysgraph is a functional neurological disorder that affects writing, specifically the layout or spelling. Frequently, people who suffer from this disorder show difficulties in writing control, since the control of this is an engine neuro-perceptual act that is affected in dysgraph.

¿Your children suffer from dysgraph? ¿You dedicate yourself to teaching and have students with dysgraph or suspicions that can suffer from it? In addition, it is common for you to ask how the dysgrade and general difficulties in writing can be differentiated according to the age of the person. In this case, or if you have interest in knowing and informing yourself about the characteristics of the dysgraph, you can continue reading this Psychology-online article: Dysgrade: definition, types, causes, treatment and examples.

1. Definition of dysgraph
2. Types of dysgra
3. Causes of dysgraph
4. DYSGROUND TREATMENT
5. Dysgraphic examples

Definition of dysgraph

Dysgraph is a disorder that affects the development and acquisition of writing ability of people, causing, above all, difficulties in free writings, in the dictates and in the copy of a text already written.

In addition, the dysgrade must be differentiated from some cases, such as having a bad letter, the general difficulties of the age in which the writing learning process, dyslexia is given. Thus, the dysgraph is distinguished from those cases since the people who suffer from this disorder have difficulties in automatically remembering and dominating the motors necessary to write letters or numbers and form words. Therefore, dysgraph affects writing and spelling, both the writing of complete words and texts and isolated letters.

Characteristics of writing in dysgraph

People who suffer from dysgram tend to share a series of characteristics in their writing. The characteristics of writing in dysgraph are:

• Lyrics difficult to understand.
• Mirror writing: Writers written as if they were the reflection of a mirror, that is, the other way around.
• Incorrect or irregular spaces of letters and words: words together or separate syllables.
• Bad presentation: dirty and with brands of having erased words to write them again.
• Irregular letter both in shape and size.
• Used and lowercase lowercase letters incorrectly.
• Bad body posture and incorrect way to take the pencil when writing.
• They write slowly and clumsy, with mistakes.
• Elimination or omission of letters.
• Inverted letters.
• Confusion of letters: for example, change an "a" for an "e".
• Inclination of letters.
• Liner of the line, giving rise to a crooked text.
• Thick line and tightening strong or very soft almost without a trace of what is written.

Types of dysgra

When we talk about the types of dysgraph, we must differentiate two major classifications that, each of them includes different types of dysgraph:

Acquired dysgraph

The acquired dysgramus consists of difficulty in due writing as consequence of a brain injury in people who already knew how to write, For example, people who have suffered trauma in a certain area of ​​the head. In the acquired dysgrade, we can differentiate central dysographies and peripheral dysgraphies:

1. Central acquired dysgraph: This type of dysgraphic affects the linguistic aspects involved in the writing of words. Within the central acquired dysgrade we find three different types:

• Phonological acquired dysgraph: This type of dysgraph occurs when the phonological route is affected, this route is not recognized as a whole, but small units such as syllables and letters are recognized. This dysgram results in understanding the rules of grapheme-phonema conversion, that is, to relate the sound and pronunciation of words with their way of writing them, therefore, people who suffer from this dysgram often make mistakes when they write unknown words, which are not part of their daily writing. For example, the letter "G" when it is pronounced alone has a different intonation than when it joins the word "cat".
• Surface acquired dysgraph: This type of dysgraph occurs when the visual route is affected, a route that allows the words to be recognized, but does not allow to decode words without understanding them or without knowing them previously. For this reason, people usually write slowly and even spelling words, present spelling errors, visual memory problems, difficulties in writing difficult and unknown words in their day to day, among others.
• Deep acquired dysgraph: This type of dysgrade occurs when the two previous routes (visual and phonological) are affected. This is characterized that semantic mistakes are made, for example, they replace soccer by basketball, giving rise to a substitution of words that are part of the same semantic field, in this case sports. In addition, there are difficulties in writing a word dictated by another person, although its meaning is known.

2. Peripheral acquired dysgraph: In this case, people suffering from this type of dysgrade show difficulties in remembering the required movements to draw a letter or write words and phrases.

Evolutionary dysgraph

Evolutionary dysgraph is given in people who are found In the writing learning process since they had never learned to write before, it is generally children up to seven years or, in exceptional cases, in illiterate people. Within the evolutionary dysgrade, we can differentiate three different types of dysgraphs:

• Phonological evolutionary dysgraph: People who suffer from phonological or superficial evolutionary dysgrade tend to present the same difficulties as people suffering from a phonological or superficial acquired dysgraph, although they differ since the evolutionary process is the natural learning process and in those acquired it is treated of people who before suffering a brain injury already knew how to write.
• Superficial evolutionary dysgraph.
• Mixed evolutionary dysgraph: On the other hand, unlike deep acquired dysgraph, in mixed evolutionary dysgrade no semantic errors are given. Mixed dysgrade is the most frequent within evolutionary dysgraphies, since the difficulties that occur on one of the routes (visual or phonological), as a consequence, hinders the development of the other route.

Causes of dysgraph

As mentioned above, there are two possible causes of dysgraph (acquired or evolutionary) and there are several causes that can cause either of the two:

• Lateralization problems.
• Motor difficulties: Difficulty in movement, both fingers and hands, and difficulties in balance and the general organization of the body.
• Personality factors: Causes related to the personality and characteristics of the person suffering from dysgraph, for example, if the person is fast or slow.
• Pedagogical causes: There are causes related to the education received in relation to writing, such as having undergone rigid teaching and not adapted to the individual differences of each student, undergoing demands marked by the teacher, family and social pressure Among partners as writing well and fast, among others.
• Difficulties in viso-perceptual ability: Problems to identify what is seen. For example, difficulties to interpret what a ball is when the person has it in front or sees it in a photograph.
• Difficulties in retaining a word in memory and difficulties in the ability to recover a word that is supposed to be retained in memory.
• Viso-Motor Coordination: Difficulties in the ability to coordinate the movement of the body with the vision.

DYSGROUND TREATMENT

It is of great importance to diagnose and treat dysgraph as soon as possible, due to its negative effect, above all, in the academic field. But before starting to treat it, you must observe carefully what are the difficulties that the person presents, in order to make a specific approach and focused on the specific characteristics of each patient, that is, to be able to perform an adapted and focused treatment on the person.

To properly deal with dysgrade, you must intervene in different areas:

• Thick psychomotor skills (global movement capacity): teach the patient what is the correct posture to write, With the aim of correcting your bad posture, for example, how to sit down, the distance between the head and the paper, position of the paper, as the pencil must be taken, among others.
• Fine psychomotor skills (more detailed movements, which require more control, usually movements with fingers): These types of movements should be treated since they affect the dependence of the hand and fingers, with the aim of getting the patient to acquire precision and coordination when writing. Some examples of exercises to strengthen fine psychomotor are cutting papers in some certain way and reviewing lines.
• Perception: it is important to work perception since the difficulties that patients show in relation to temporal, spatial, viso-perceptual and attentional perception, They can cause errors or difficulties in the fluidity, inclination and guidance of writing.
• Viso-motor: The function of viso-motor is coordinate the movement of the eyes with the movement of the body. In the case that this function is affected, especially when it comes to the movement of the hands and fingers, it makes people writing difficult and, therefore, the improvement of this coordination must be worked on.
• Graph-motor: It is necessary to treat graphing-motricity to be able to Correct the basic movements of writing. To do this, it is recommended to perform exercises that stimulate the basic movements of the letters, such as writing a letter by joining already marked points, reviewing letters or figures already written or drawn, following borders that lead to loop movements, among others.
• Graph-writing: To treat the area of ​​graph-writing, calligraphy exercises are usually used, to be able to improve all the letters that make up the alphabet.
• The Improvement Writer: In this case, it is intended Improve writing fluency and spelling offenses. It is recommended to perform exercises such as copying letters, joining syllables to form a word, join a word with its corresponding drawing (for example, join the word "ball" with the drawing of a ball), among others.
• Relaxation: it is common for the patient to fatigue between activities that lead a lot of effort, therefore, it is recommended Relax the doll, fingers, etc. For this, these relaxation exercises for children can be useful.

Dysgraphic examples

Example of acquired dysgraph

A girl has a motorcycle accident in which there is a blow to the head, producing a creneenphalic trauma and precisely affecting the brain area that is responsible for writing. He enters a coma for a few months and when his relatives wake up they realize that he does not write in the same way as before, now he presents many more difficulties that he had ever shown before. From the hospital, they consider that it is an acquired peripheral dysgraph, since it has difficulties to remember the necessary movement to draw the letters.

Example of evolutionary dysgraph

A five -year -old boy shows difficulties when writing. At first the parents did not give much importance, but when they saw that the child, at age six, continued to show the same difficulties they were surprised. Then they talked to the teacher, to see if their son's other companions also showed those difficulties. The teacher told them that her son was one of the few students who had the most difficulties to write and asked them permission so that her son could be visited by the school's psychologist, the parents accepted. When the boy met with the psychologist, he proposed different activities that entailed the writing, to be able to see his body position, his inclination, etc., so that he finally considered that it was a phonological evolutionary dysgrade. It is important to know when it is necessary to go to the child psychologist.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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