Authors: Della Sala, Sergio¹; Cubelli, Roberto²

Source: Journal of Neuropsychology, Volume 1, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 3-26(24)

Abstract:

Mirror writing refers to the production of individual letters, whole words or sentences in reverse direction. Unintentional mirror writing has been observed in young children and brain-damaged people and interpreted as the manifestation of different cognitive impairments. We report on a mirror writing patient following left hemisphere stroke and the mirror writing phenomena in one sample of children learning to write. We propose a unitary account of mirror writing as the unavailability of the appropriate movement direction representation, either because the right configuration has yet to be specified fully (children learning to write) or because of its damage (acquired brain injury). For this reason, we propose that the lack of directional information relevant to writing be labelled `directional apraxia'.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1348/174866407X180783

Affiliations: 1: Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK 2: Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, University of Trento, Italy