Dysgraphia is a disorder that results in impaired writing by hand, which may include impaired handwriting ability, spelling ability (without a deficit in reading), or both handwriting and spelling impairments.
Dysgraphia may occur alone or alongside Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), dyslexia (impaired reading disability), or oral and written language learning disability (OWL-LD). Recognizing the signs of these individual learning disabilities is a pertinent step towards providing these students with the access they need to specialized services and interventions.
Recognizing Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia consists of many subtypes. Recognizing the characteristics of the specific subtypes of dysgraphia and understanding which subtype applies to specific students is important for making informed decisions for instruction and intervention. This data can also support a referral for additional assessment by a school psychologist or occupational therapist, if needed.
Graphomotor dysgraphia relates to deficits in the physical output of writing due to fine motor skill deficits. These students will demonstrate illegible handwriting during both spontaneous writing and copying due to a difficulty maneuvering a writing utensil.
Executive dysgraphia relates to deficits in production linked to executive function deficits. These students will demonstrate difficulties planning, organizing, writing, and self-monitoring due to a variety of written language deficits.
Dyslexic dysgraphia relates to deficits in spelling. These students have tremendous difficulty mastering spelling patterns and their written work contains many spelling errors. There are three subtypes and students may have a combination of two or more subtypes:
- The dysphonetic subtype relates to deficits that stem from the phonological processor. Students’ abilities to segment, manipulate, and blend sounds in words when spelling is impacted.
- The surface subtype relates to deficits linked to difficulty with orthographic representations stemming from inefficient brain functioning. This inefficiency impacts students’ abilities to map orthographic spelling patterns when phonemes can be represented by more than one grapheme. These students are able to represent every sound with a plausible spelling option. However, they will have considerable difficulty choosing the correct spelling pattern or spelling irregular words that do not contain direct 1:1 correspondences.
- The mixed subtype relates to deficits in both phonological processing and orthographic knowledge.
Dysgraphia is a learning disability that can be diagnosed or identified through a comprehensive assessment of handwriting and related skill areas, such as fine motor skills, knowledge of grammar and mechanics, and composition skills.
