Causes, signs and methods of dysgraphia correction in adults and children

Dysgraphia is a writing disorder associated with permutation, omission, replacement of letters in words, parts of a sentence, distortion of endings. Primary school students and left-handers are at risk. For some students, this pathology is combined with dyslexia - a violation of the reading skill. It is possible to correct dysgraphia in adults and children only with the help of special correction classes with a speech therapist and teacher.

Show all

Causes of pathology

In adults and children, dysgraphia can be a consequence of:

• organic damage to the speech centers in the brain (traumatic brain injury);
• mental disorders;
• brain surgery;
• infectious inflammation of the membranes - meningitis, encephalitis.

In adults, dysgraphia can be caused by strokes, brain tumors. In children, the development of pathology is facilitated by:

• maternal infections during the prenatal period;
• asphyxia;
• hypoxia.

The risk group includes children with delayed speech and mental development, general speech underdevelopment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Associated reasons include:

• bilingualism in the family;
• social and speech deprivation;
• overloading the central nervous system (early literacy training);
• the child's unpreparedness for school;
• constant absence from classes;
• agrammatisms in the speech of the people around the child;
• unfavorable family environment.

The child may also have impaired visual and auditory perception, memory, spatial orientation.

Types and forms of dysgraphia

Psycholinguists and speech therapists distinguish the following types of dysgraphia:

1. 1. Acoustic - the lack of differentiation in the auditory perception of sounds, which is reflected in writing by replacing, mixing letters that are similar in sound.
2. 2. Optical - a violation in the visual perception of graphic symbols. Pathology of recognition, the ratio of sound and image of a letter in visual representation. Characters are mixed when writing. Patients often confuse the following letters: п-н, у-и, Ц-ш; n-i, m-l, w-i; p-t, b-d, n-k. There is a mirror-like spelling (in left-handers). In severe cases, separate letters are put, without combining them into syllables and words.
3. 3. Motor - the child has difficulties in mastering motor skills in writing. There is also a discrepancy between the visual image of the letter and the actions during writing.

The following forms of dysgraphia are distinguished:

1. 1. Articulatory-acoustic - associated with the difficulties of articulation, sound pronunciation, phonemic perception. The child writes as he speaks, therefore, oral speech is initially corrected, and then written.
2. 2. Acoustic - associated with the replacement of letters that are similar in sound. Pronunciation practically does not suffer, deaf, voiced, hissing, whistling are mixed. Hardness and softness are also incorrectly formed - "lubit", "letter", "uli", "Marya", etc.
3. 3. Violation of linguistic analysis and synthesis - a similar form of dysgraphia manifests itself in replacement and omission, repetition, attribution of extra letters in words, contamination, separate and continuous spelling of prepositions and prefixes ("goes over", "didn’t find").
4. 4. Agrammatic - the grammar is broken in sentences, phrases ("good cat", "modest girl"). Schoolchildren are fluent in pronunciation and spelling of words, but there are errors in declension and conjugation. In addition, there are inaccuracies in the endings, the arrangement of words and phrases.
5. 5. Optical - manifests itself in problems with visual-spatial orientation. The child does not catch the differences between the visual images of letters, especially those where the same elements are present - sticks, ovals.

Most often, schoolchildren of primary grades (2nd, 4th grades) have an agrammatical form of dysgraphia and a violation of writing associated with difficulties in language analysis and synthesis. There may be mixed variants of the disorder.

In adults, "pure" forms of dysgraphia are rarely found; the state of the writing depends on the severity of the primary defect. One can observe an optical variety with agrammatisms, which is caused by impaired motor skills and visual-spatial orientation. Patients confuse letters that are similar in their spelling: b-b, b-b, w-w, gr, o-a, etc.



An example of optical and grammatical dysgraphia



Symptoms

You need to pay attention to the following signs of dysgraphia in children and adults, which you can identify yourself:

• repeated errors not related to the rules and regulations of the language;
• replacement and mixing of letters that are similar in spelling and sound;
• mistakes in endings, agrammatisms;
• omissions, permutations, additions of letters and syllables;
• violations in the continuous and separate use of words with prepositions and prefixes;
• subtle spelling of letters;
• non-observance of the correct height, slipping off the line;
• different inclination of letters, replacement of lowercase and uppercase.

Other symptoms in children are inattention, distraction, hyperactivity, memory impairment. The risk group includes left-handers, including retrained, those who attended a preschool speech therapy group.

Adults who have undergone neurosurgery, brain disease or stroke have absent-mindedness, incoherent speech, and impaired vision and hearing.

The child can attend speech therapy classes or study at home with their parents. For adults, it is permissible to independently perform written exercises, but under the supervision of a speech therapist. Oral sessions with children can be given by parents and a specialist. This is how a speech therapist works with adults.

Automation of certain sounds, especially "p", is more successfully implemented if help is sought at an early age. In adults, they are more difficult to pose, since the perception is already programmed for "erroneous".

The table shows examples of exercises for independent work:

Prophylaxis

At an early age, the prevention of dysgraphia is the development of visual, auditory perception, fine motor skills. Parents need to be careful about premature learning, do not rush the child to count and write, all loads should be given in dosage and in the form of games.

You can offer the following tasks:

1. 1. "What kind of object" - show the contour images by which the child must determine the object.
2. 2. "Find similar" - in the illustration you are asked to find the same objects.
3. 3. "Searching for what is superfluous" - the child is offered to show an unnecessary object.
4. 4. "What is it" - according to the scattered details in the picture, they ask to determine what is depicted.
5. 5. "Seguin board" (box of forms) - offer to insert figures into the corresponding holes.

In adults, the prevention of writing disorder is handwriting correction, reading fiction books, describing illustrations.

Parents need to take into account that work with disabilities in a schoolchild should take place in a positive atmosphere, there is no need to shout at the child if something does not work out for him. You can introduce a reward system - for each correctly completed task, give a small gift.