“Afferent dysgraphia” in a patient and in normal subjects

We report a detailed single case study of a patient, VB, who showed a form of dysgraphia which Lebrun (1976) termed “afferent dysgraphia”. VB, who was not aphasic and showed preserved spelling knowledge in spelling aloud or arranging cardboard letters, tended to write only down the right-hand side of a page and made frequent errors involving the omission or repetition of letters or strokes. These errors occurred most often in repeated sequences of identical or similar letters or strokes. The same letter and stroke errors, occurring at much the same frequency, were observed when normal subjects were required to write without sight of their writing hand whilst simultaneously executing a continuous tapping sequence with the fingers of their left hand. We attribute certain of VB's dysgraphic symptoms to a general left-sided neglect which also affected her reading (Ellis, Young,&Flude, 1987). The letter and stroke errors (with the possible exception of failures to dot i's and to cross t's) are, however, given the same explanation as for the normal subjects, namely a failure to utilise visual and kinaesthetic feedback in the motor control of handwriting.