Deep dysgraphia in Turkish

Issue title: Acquired Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Across Scripts

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Raman, Ilhan | Weekes, Brendan Stuart

Affiliations: Middlesex University, UK | University of Sussex, UK

Note: [] Corresponding author: Brendan Weekes, Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QG. E-mail: B.S.Weekes@sussex.ac.uk

Abstract: Deep dysgraphic patients make semantic errors when writing to dictation and they cannot write nonwords. Extant reports of deep dysgraphia come from languages with relatively opaque orthographies. Turkish is a transparent orthography because the bidirectional mappings between phonology and orthography are completely predictable. We report BRB, a biscriptal Turkish-English speaker who has acquired dysgraphia characterised by semantic errors as well as effects of grammatical class and imageability on writing in Turkish. Nonword spelling is abolished. A similar pattern of errors is observed in English. BRB is the first report of acquired dysgraphia in a truly transparent writing system. We argue that deep dysgraphia results from damage to the mappings that are common to both languages between word meanings and orthographic representations.

Keywords: Deep dysgraphia, Turkish orthography, spelling deficits, phonological deficits, orthographic transparency, biscriptal writing

Journal: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 16, no. 2-3, pp. 59-69, 2005