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Directional apraxia: A unitary account of mirror writing following brain injury or as found in normal young children
Author(s) -
Sala Sergio,
Cubelli Roberto
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of neuropsychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.85
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1748-6653
pISSN - 1748-6645
DOI - 10.1348/174866407x180783
Subject(s) - psychology , apraxia , unavailability , representation (politics) , cognitive psychology , unitary state , cognition , mirror image , aphasia , linguistics , neuroscience , physics , optics , politics , political science , law , engineering , reliability engineering , philosophy
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’.