Acquired Dysgraphia in Arabic Orthography: A Case-Series Analyses
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1
Seton Hall University, Communication Neuroscience & Aphasia Research Laboratory, United States
Introduction
The value of the dual-route model (DRM) of reading and writing (Clotheart et al., 2001) was judged by the ability to account for patterns of abnormal performance observed in clinical settings. As a result, several types of central writing impairments in English language were reported. The literature primarily included studies in English language and there is little evidence on cross-linguistic orthographic data. In order to understand acquired dysgraphia across scripts, it is important to report what is observed in other languages (Weekes, 2012). In the reviewed literature, there are no studies on types of acquired dysgraphia in adult Arabic individuals with aphasia (AIWA) after brain damage. The comparison of the script systems in English and Arabic reveals differences in the orthographic and morphologic systems. Arabic script is labeled to have both deep and shallow orthography; Vowelized Arabic is considered shallow orthography, and un-vowelized Arabic is considered deep orthography (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004). Therefore, individuals are expected to use either route (lexical, sub-lexical) depending on the type of orthography presented (Beland & Mimouni, 2001). The aim of this paper is to report the patterns of acquired dysgraphia observed in (AIWA) and to compare the error patterns with cases of acquired dysgraphia in other languages, including English.
Method
Fifteen participants, with the history of left hemisphere stroke and aphasia served as the subjects in the study (Table 1.). Of these, nine (60%) were male, aged 26–67 years and six (40%) were female, aged 42–53 years. All subjects were right-handed native speakers of Arabic, and four of them were bilinguals. The educational achievement of participants has ranged from primary education to university-level education.
Experimental tasks
Participants were tested on writing to dictation task. The testing material was based on the theoretical framework of the DRM model of writing and was constructed similar to the John Hopkins University Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Batteries (Goodman and Caramazza 1986; Beeson & Hillis, 2000). The test included 412 words obtained from the Buckwalter and Parkinson (2011), which provides a list of the 5,000 most frequently used words in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
Results and discussion
The writing to dictation performance of each participant, except one, revealed the presence of typical symptoms of central dysgraphias: three with phonological dysgraphia, seven with graphemic buffer dysgraphia, four with mixed dysgraphia, and one without dysgraphia. All subjects had impaired sub-lexical route in spelling task. The patterns of acquired dysgraphia are similar to the ones reported in languages with deep orthography such as English and French, as well as languages with shallow orthography such as Italian and Spanish. In contrast to the previous case reports, our study evidenced frequent occurrence of graphemic buffer dysgraphia. The DRM of spelling posited that qualitatively similar cognitive/processing architecture is available for all orthographies including Arabic. However, this assumption is still an open question, with limited data from fifteen subjects, it is hard to decide whether two distinct processing routes are systematically used in reading aloud and spelling to dictation tasks.
References
Abu-Rabia, S. & Taha, H. (2004). Reading and spelling error analysis of native Arabic dyslexic readers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17 (7-8), 651-689. doi: 10.1007/s11145-004-2657-x‖.
Beeson, P.M., & Hillis, A.E. (2001). Comprehension and production of written words. In R. Chapey (Ed.), Language intervention strategies in adult aphasia (pp. 572-595). Baltimore: Lippencott, Williams, & Williams.
Beland, R., & Mimouni, Z. (2001). Deep dyslexia n the two languages of an Arabic/French bilingual patient, Cognition, 82, 77-126.
Buckwalter, T., & Parkinson, D. (2011). A Frequency Dictionary of Arabic: Core Vocabulary for Learners. New York, NY: Routledge
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204- 256.
Goodman, R. A. & Cramazza, A. (1986). The Johns Hopkins University Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Batteries. (unpublished).
Weeks, B. (2012). Acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia across scripts. Behavioural Neurology, 25, 159-163.
Keywords:
dual-route model,
dysgraphia,
Arabic orthography,
cognitive neuropsychology,
Aphasia
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.
Presentation Type:
poster presentation
Topic:
General Submission
Citation:
Aldera
MA and
Balasubramanian
V
(2019). Acquired Dysgraphia in Arabic Orthography: A Case-Series Analyses.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00018
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Received:
27 Apr 2017;
Published Online:
25 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Venu Balasubramanian, Seton Hall University, Communication Neuroscience & Aphasia Research Laboratory, South Orange, New Jersey, 07079, United States, Venugopal.Balasubramanian@shu.edu