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Because reading/writing is a fundamental tool for children's development, the main failure in its learning—developmental dyslexia—gives rise to many attempts to remediate. A recent remedy proposed by Mather (2022), published in Perceptual and Motor Skills [129(3), p. 468], is impressive through its radical nature and the extent of its consequences. It consists of delaying the teaching of writing to the age of 7–8 years, whereas, at present, most children in Western or comparable cultures learn to write even before compulsory school (generally at age six). In this article, I present a set of arguments whose addition and possible interaction lead, if not to reject, at least to restrict Mather's proposal. My arguments show both the inefficiency of Mather's proposal through two observational studies, its practical inapplicability in contemporary society, the importance of learning to write at least in the first year of elementary school, and the stinging past failure of a math reform of similar scope (i.e., learning to count). I also question the neurological theory underlying Mather's proposal, and, finally, I point out that, even if delaying learning to write were limited to students who Mather expects (at age six) to experience future dyslexia, this remedy would be inapplicable and probably ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School education plays an essential role in the formation and development of the child's personality, and due to this fact it is necessary that the educational process be adapted to the requirements of all children, whether they are normal or with special educational requirements, right-handed or left-handed. Due to the predominance of the right cerebral hemisphere these children process information differently. However, the entire school curriculum is designed for children who are left-hemisphere dominant. Thus the right hemisphere is little used, while the left hemisphere is overworked. In the case of left-handed children, this fact generates learning difficulties, due to the fact that most educational activities fail to highlight their abilities, which are different from those of other students. We must draw attention to the fact that a left-handed child is not a child with an intellectual disability, but an inflexible educational system can turn a biological peculiarity such as left-handedness into a handicap. This paper deals with the problems that the left-handed child may have in the educational setting, especially due to the specific learning difficulties that may arise. Approaching the problem through the analysis of learning styles will help us to develop a series of methods and activities that will value them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mirror-invariance inhibition does not generalize to subsequently acquired scripts. • Mirror-invariance inhibition is unaffected by the number of prior scripts mastered. • Script form and function affect the trajectory of mirror-invariance inhibition. • Letters' text-infrequency can frustrate the inhibition of mirror-invariance. Does suppression of mirror-invariance in one script generalize to a subsequently learned script? We examined mirror invariance in writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptal children and adults (n = 181) learning the Hebrew print script (for reading), and among a subset (n = 92) also learning the Hebrew cursive script (for writing). Hebrew-Latin biscriptal Israeli adults (n = 17) provided comparison. For the most part, mirror invariance was more evident in Hebrew print than in Latin in both writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptals. The number of previously acquired scripts had no effect. Letters' text-frequency inversely affected written mirror-error frequency. Written reversal errors were less frequent in cursive; orientation recognition was more fluent in print. Mirror-invariance suppression in one's native script does not generalize to a subsequently acquired script. Factors affecting mirror-invariance suppression in the subsequent script include its form and function and individual letters' text-frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multisensory learning to read involves, to a large extent, learning to write. A major problem in the initial teaching of handwriting is preventing children from producing reversed letters, especially when the reversed letters are identical to other letters. Torres et al. (2021) offer an efficient method for remediating this problem. Here, we analyze the reversals in their writing data, obtained on Brazilian first-graders (Mage = 6.0 years). Surprisingly, this analysis led to the observation that the first graders almost systematically reverse both the letters b and d in the particular copying conditions (the students look at one letter at a time for 3 s, then immediately after they had to write it while blindfolded). We first describe succinctly and discuss three models susceptible to account for reversal writing, with the aim to question their capacity of account for the curious observation just mentioned. The three models respectively attribute a major role to 1) initial (perceptive) mirror equivalence, 2) intra-hemispheric transfer, 3) orientation of the letters. Because none of the three models examined accounts convincingly for the observation, we accommodated and specified Model 2, adding also a major idea of Model 3. The resulting model assumes that the mirror-letter reversed image representation (b for d and vice-versa) is strongly activated in the right cerebral hemisphere, and that the top-down processes originating from this hemisphere were exacerbated by the eyes closed condition. Of course, this post-hoc and speculative model should be tested in other conditions and with other children.

The French National Cohort of Children Study (Etude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance— ELFE) tested the literacy and numeracy skills of 4- to 5-year-old typically developing children in the second year of école maternelle. Tasks were administered by more than 4,000 teachers at schools across France. One of the study's numeracy tasks required participants to write the number of ducks (up to 5) they had counted. Analyzing the digits written by 14,904 children showed that miswritings were much more common for the digit 3 than for the digit 4. This result is consistent with the right-orienting rule, which young children in Western cultures apply when they do not know a digit's orientation, and which leads them to write, for example, ε instead of 3.The nature and frequency of miswritten digits did not differ significantly between the 466 children presumed to have written with their left hand and the 3,531 children presumed to have written with their right hand. However, a logistic mixed-effects regression showed that two other factors—age of entry to école maternelle and very early smartphone use—had a (modest) influence on the percentage of digits that were miswritten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soares, Lages, Oliveira, and Cabrera-Hernández (2019) recently showed that the mirror-letter interference effect observed for words containing reversal letters was reliable for words containing left-oriented mirror-letters as 'd', but not for words containing right-oriented mirror-letters as 'b', thus indicating that the directionality of the reversal letters cannot be disregarded when examining the cost of suppressing the mirror-generalization mechanism at the early stages of visual word recognition. Here we examined whether this bias can also be observed for left-oriented non-reversal letters such as 'g', 'j', and 'z', which just as 'd' are also prone to errors in writing in left-to-right orthographies as European Portuguese (EP). Thirty-six EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision task combined with a masked-priming paradigm in which target words containing either left-oriented (e.g., 'g', genial) or right-oriented (e.g., 'c', casual) non-reversal letters were preceded by 50 ms primes that could be the same as the target (genial–genial, casual–casual), nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of the left- or right-oriented non-reversal letter (enial–genial, asual–casual), or nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of another left-oriented or right-oriented non-reversal letter as control (enial-genial, asual-casual). Results showed that the amount of priming produced by identity primes and mirror-image primes was virtually the same for words with left-oriented (e.g., genial–genial = enial–genial), but not for words with right-oriented non-reversal letters (e.g., casual–casual > asual–casual), hence extending the right-oriented bias observed for words containing reversal letters to words containing non-reversal letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract During the postictal period, the left cerebral hemisphere was affected by the seizures, and consecutive epileptiform discharges and disinhibition of the right cerebral hemisphere could have occurred, which may explain the observed behavior.

Copyright of Documenta & Instrumenta is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cet article porte sur le rapport entre le texte et l’image dans la peinture roumaine du XVIe siècle. L’auteur souligne que l’icône ou la peinture murale orthodoxe ne sont pas des «compositions» dans le sens traditionnel du verbe « composer ». Le peintre médiéval ne compose pas l’image, il la transpose sur la surface de l’icône, du mur, de la feuille dessinée ou d’un autre support (en langue slavonne de l’église cette transposition s’appelle « perevod » ce qui veut dire «traduction» par rapport à un original, appelé « podlinnik »). L’image médiévale orthodoxe est une sorte d’idéogramme complexe qui exige un tout autre genre de « lecture » que la peinture moderne. Il est extrêmement intéressant de constater que les lois de cette « lecture » (et, par conséquent, de cette « écriture ») sont plus proches des lois de la lecture des textes littéraires que des lois de la contemplation et de la compréhension des images «purement visuelles». L’image médiévale a une «grammaire» si stricte et si détaillée, que rien – ou presque rien – n’est laissé au hasard. Grâce à la rigueur et à la prévisibilité de cette « grammaire », l’irréductibilité de la peinture (et des beaux-arts en général) à la langue parlée ou écrite est franchie en grande partie. Pas seulement la structure compositionnelle, l’emplacement des objets, les paysages, les architectures d’arrière plan, les gestes des figures, mais même le modelé des formes peintes, la carnation des visages et des mains, les accents de lumière et d’ombre sont strictement réglementés. Mais, comment s’articulent et quelles sont les structures et les typologies du texte et de l’image dans la peinture roumaine du XVIe siècle ? L’auteur de l’étude rappelle que, contrairement à l’espace physique newtonien qui est homogène et isotrope, l’espace de l’inscription, l’espace de la peinture monumentale ou de l’icône ont une « topologie » beaucoup plus complexe. Cette « topologie » suppose un espace profondément non homogène et anisotrope. Les « directions », la « gauche » et la « droite », le « haut » et le « bas », le « centre » et la « périphérie » ne sont pas ici de simples coordonnées neutres, comme dans l’espace euclidien. Ils ont leur dimension symbolique, dogmatique, axiologique. La production et l’interprétation des textes dépendent de l’existence des codes ou des conventions établis pour la communication. Le sens d’un signe dépend du code, au sein duquel il a été conçu, et les codes fournissent un cadre dans lequel les signes obtiennent leurs significations. Les programmes iconographiques des églises orthodoxes sont également des codes : différentes parties de leur architecture (murs, dômes, voûtes, pendentifs, tambours des coupoles, absides, conques, arcs de triomphe, piliers, colonnes, embrasures de portes, montants de fenêtres, contreforts etc.) sont codés par des thèmes et par des sujets iconographiques (en d’autres termes – par des types iconographiques). Parmi les autres questions soulevées dans cet article, nous devons mentionner la classification « par genres » pour les types iconographiques orthodoxes, la sémantique du geste, la typologie des erreurs dans les textes anciens, le rôle des inscriptions simulées et des écritures spéculaires, le problème du rapport entre le sens et la référence.

This study investigated the grapho-motor patterns used in writing Chinese characters. A Chinese patient, CSC, who demonstrated post-brain-injury mirror writing, was recruited. In Experiment 1, non-mirrored writing responses were obtained when CSC was instructed to copy asymmetrical non-verbal symbols and pictures. Resembling the patterns observed in a patient's writing reported in a previous study, it was hypothesized that CSC's mirror writing was a result of untransformed preserved grapho-motor patterns. In Experiments 2 and 3, CSC was further instructed to copy real Chinese characters, pseudo-characters with authentic radicals and logographemes (i.e., stroke clusters that frequently occur in radicals), and Hangul characters with stroke clusters resembling the shapes of authentic logographemes. The results showed that CSC demonstrated mirror writing only when authentic Chinese orthographic units were involved. Non-mirrored writing responses were obtained from stimuli without authentic Chinese orthographic units. In sum, CSC's performance supported the existence of grapho-motor patterns of Chinese orthographic units represented in the brain. Theoretical implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The directionality of reversal letters affects the mirror-letter interference effect. • Reliable mirror-letter interference effects were observed for d- but not for b-words. • Mirror-letter interference effects increases as reading development unfolds. • Results ask for amendments to the current models of visual-word recognition. Abstract Research has shown that recognizing words that contain reversal letters (e.g., b / d) is more difficult than recognizing words that do not contain them. Although none of the current computational models of visual word recognition can account for this effect, it was recently suggested that it may arise from lateral inhibition connections that, at the letter level of processing, can be established between reversal nodes. However, because in writing left-faced letters (e.g., d) are more prone to be reversed into right-faced letters (e.g., b) than the inverse, we hypothesized that the directionality of the reversal letters could modulate the magnitude of the mirror-letter interference effect. In this study, we directly tested this hypothesis by using a highly controlled set of European Portuguese (EP) words containing only either the mirror-letter b or the mirror-letter d in three lexical decision (go/no-go) masked priming experiments conducted with EP adult skilled readers (Experiment 1) and two groups of EP developing readers (third-grade children [Experiment 2] and fifth-grade children [Experiment 3]). Results showed that reliable mirror-letter interference effects were observed only for d -words in both adult skilled readers and fifth-grade children, which asks for additional amendments in the current computational models of visual word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Caucasian right-handed woman exhibited transient mirror writing. • Mirror writing occurred following a perimesencephalic haemorrhage. • No lateralising lesion has been identified to explain this phenomenon. • Radiological features and hyponatraemia suggested mirror writing could have been due to cerebral ischaemia. • Hyponatraemia might have portended delayed ischaemic neurological deficit. We report a case of a right-handed Caucasian woman who developed mirror writing following a non-aneurysmal, non-traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage. The patient was unaware of having this phenomenon, and it was detected by clinical staff when the patient was writing a card to a family member. Serial imaging has ruled out a stroke as well as an underlying vascular abnormality. This phenomenon resolved after two months. Whilst there is a body of literature surrounding mirror writing, to our knowledge, this is the first description of mirror writing in the setting of a perimesencephalic subarachnoid haemorrhage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the postictal period, the left cerebral hemisphere was affected by the seizures, and consecutive epileptiform discharges and disinhibition of the right cerebral hemisphere could have occurred, which may explain the observed behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research into character reversals in writings produced by occidental children has shown that they mainly reverse the left-oriented digits (1, 2, 3, 7, and 9) and therefore appear to apply a right-orienting rule. But do they produce similar reversal errors when asked to recognize the digits? In an experiment, based on eye-tracking observations of 50 children (Mage = 5.4 years), children had to point towards a target digit in a 2 × 2 matrix also containing three distractor digits, one of which was the mirror-reversed writing of the correctly written target digit. This recognition task led to a true “battle” in children’s memory between the two writings of the target digit. This battle is shown in the graphical abstract that represents a heat map from a sub-sample of children (on the left side) and the fixation points map from an individual child (on the right side). Rather than following the predicted right-orienting rule, the children’s responses appeared to be biased towards digits in the right-hand column of the 2 × 2 matrices (when the reversed target digit was not in the same column as the correctly written target digit). As a whole, these findings support the hypotheses that many 4- to 6-year-old’s representations of the digit writings are unoriented in their memory and that these children may adopt different solutions to overcome this lack of orientation depending on whether they write or read.

Mirror writing is often produced by healthy children during early acquisition of literacy, and has been observed in adults following neurological disorders or insults. The neural mechanisms responsible for involuntary mirror writing remain debated, but in healthy children, it is typically attributed to the delayed development of a process of overcoming mirror invariance while learning to read and write. We present an unusual case of sudden-onset, persistent mirror writing in a previously typical seven-year-old girl. Using her dominant right hand only, she copied and spontaneously produced all letters, words and sentences, as well as some numbers and objects, in mirror image. Additionally, she frequently misidentified letter orientations in perceptual assessments. Clinical, neuropsychological, and functional neuroimaging studies were carried out over sixteen months. Neurologic and ophthalmologic examinations and a standard clinical MRI scan of the head were normal. Neuropsychological testing revealed average scores on most tests of intellectual function, language function, verbal learning and memory. Visual perception and visual reasoning were average, with the exception of below average form constancy, and mild difficulties on some visual memory tests. Activation and functional connectivity of the reading and writing network was assessed with fMRI. During a reading task, the VWFA showed a strong response to words in mirror but not in normal letter orientation – similar to what has been observed in typically developing children previously – but activation was atypically reduced in right primary visual cortex and Exner's Area. Resting-state connectivity within the reading and writing network was similar to that of age-matched controls, but hemispheric asymmetry between the balance of motor-to-visual input was found for Exner's Area. In summary, this unusual case suggests that a disruption to visual-motor integration rather than to the VWFA can contribute to sudden-onset, persistent mirror writing in the absence of clinically detectable neurological insult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When learning to write, children often mirror-reverse individual letters. For children learning to use the Latin alphabet, in a left-to-right writing culture, letters that appear to face left (such as J and Z) seem to be more prone to reversal than those that appear to face right (such as B and C). It has been proposed that, because most asymmetrical Latin letters face right, children statistically learn this general regularity and are subsequently biased to write any letter rightward. The evidence for this character-facing bias is circumstantial, however, because letter-facing direction is confounded with other factors that could affect error rates; for instance, J and Z are left-facing, but they are also infrequent. We report the first controlled experimental test of the character-facing bias. We taught 43 Scottish primary schoolchildren (aged 4.8–5.8 years) four artificial, letter-like characters, two of which were left-facing and two of which were right-facing. The characters were novel and so were not subject to prior exposure effects, and alternate groups of children were assigned to identical but mirror-reflected character sets. Children were three times more likely to mirror-write a novel character they had learned in a left-facing format than to mirror-write one they had learned in a right-facing format. This provides the first experimental confirmation of the character-facing bias in literacy development and suggests that implicit knowledge acquired from exposure to written language is readily generalized to novel letter-like forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has found that children reverse mainly the left-oriented characters when writing from memory (e.g. they write ɩ and ε instead of J and 3). In order to obtain an objective definition of the left-orientation of a character, the ratings of the level of left-orientation of all the asymmetrical capital letters and digits by 142 adult students was analysed in Study 1. Study 2, on 298 five-six-year-old children, examined an immediate prediction of Study 1, namely that the children reverse mainly the digits that the adult students have rated left-oriented. Other predictions, both of the posited representation of the writing during the reversal stage and the neurological process of mirror generalisation, were verified: the simplicity of the representation of the symmetrical digits 0 and 8 makes incorrect writings very rare; the mirror generalisation, which operates only in the left-right direction, makes other transformations (inversion or 180° rotation) very rare. Finally, the explanatory power of some putative individual factors of reversal (e.g. writing with the left hand) is shown to be far lower than that of the left-orientation of the characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In left-to-right writing cultures, spontaneous mirror writing of letters and digits in preliterate children appears more frequently on left-than right-facing characters. A compelling theory drawn on neuropsychological evidence of mirror generalization suggests that children resort to a right-orienting/writing rule when learning to write. The aim of the present study was to conceptually replicate and specify recent findings (Fischer, 2017a) on the predominant contribution of writing directionality to mirror writing in preliterate children. A training study was designed to compare on-line production of conventional versus mirror writing of 4-to-5 year-old French children (n = 30). Over a 4-week period, children were taught to write from memory words and digits. During a subsequent writing-from-memory task, a spatial constraint (Cornell, 1985) was imposed to elicit paired conventional and mirror writing of the words/digits. Spatial and kinematic data were recorded through the use of a digital pen. The results indicate a main contribution of writing directionality to letter and digit reversals. Furthermore, kinematic equivalence between conventional and mirror writing supports the neurological mirror generalization process in children. Overall, these results constitute a further illustration that the manifestation of mirror writing in typically developing children is culture-bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has established that 5- to 6-year-old typically developing children in a left-right writing culture spontaneously reverse left-oriented characters (e.g., they write instead of J) when they write single characters. Thus, children seem to implicitly apply a right-writing rule (RWR: see Fischer & Koch, 2016a). In Study 1, the reversal of all asymmetrical digits and capital letters by 356 children was modeled with a simple Rasch model, which describes reversal as the outcome of two competing responses, correct writing and writing in the cultural direction of writing. It accounts for the high frequency of reversals of the left-oriented characters (3, Z, J, 1, 2, 7, 9), as predicted by the RWR. Study 2 investigated letter reversals when children spontaneously write their name from right to left. Most of the 204 children in the study radically changed the direction of the RWR by reversing mainly the right-oriented letters (B, C, D, E, F, G, K, L, N, P, R, S). Hence, a more universal formulation of the RWR would be as an implicit rule orienting characters in the writing direction. This reformulated rule is consistent with the 'spatial agency bias' model (Suitner & Maas, 2016), according to which writing direction affects thoughts and actions. Visual and motoric statistical learning may favor bootstrapping of the rule. Taken together, these data demonstrate the prominent role of culture in a phenomenon-character reversal or mirror writing-which has often been presented uniquely as biologically determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ꓱ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character’s orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters’ shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture.

The hypothesis that an atypical hemispheric specialization is associated to developmental dyslexia (DD) is receiving renewed interest, lending some support to Orton’s theory. In this article, we investigated whether interhemispheric transfer processes (IHT) are likely to be involved in developmental dyslexia. In this study, we tested 13 children with developmental dyslexia and 13 matched controls (aged 8 to 13 years) in four different tasks. In a tactile transfer task, the dyslexic children’s performance was less accurate. In a standard Poffenberger paradigm, dyslexic children performed slower than the controls in all conditions and did not show any difference between crossed and uncrossed conditions. Furthermore, they showed an increased asymmetry of performance according to the responding hand, while controls gave more coherent responses. In a visual task of object orientation discrimination, dyslexic children had slower Response Times (RTs) than controls, especially for mirror-reversed objects in the right visual field. Finally, a higher number of dyslexic children showed mirror-drawing or mirror-writing with respect to controls. Our results as a whole show that children with DD are impaired in interhemispheric transfer, although the differences in performance among dyslexic individuals suggest the impairment of different psychophysiological mechanisms. As such, a common origin in terms of connectivity problems is proposed.

The present study examined the development of mirror writing in typically developing children using a longitudinal design involving 166 children initially aged 4–5 years. The children were tested three times, with approximately one year between tests. The main predictions were that: (i) mirror copying of characters at T1 (4- to 5-years old) will be less frequent than mirror writing from memory at T2 (5- to 6-years old), (ii) an implicit right-writing rule—which holds that children orient single characters toward the right and hence most frequently reverse the left-oriented characters (e.g., 3, J)—explains well both character reversal at T2 and T3 and changes between T2 and T3 (6- to 7-years old), and (iii) name-mirror writing is possible as soon as children start learning to write. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art. Serie Beaux-Arts is the property of G. Oprescu Institute of Art History of the Romanian Academy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mirror writing (MW) has mainly been observed in left-hemisphere-damaged patients writing with the left hand. This study evaluated the presence of MW in 24 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We found that MW is not a typical feature of MCI. However, one woman (FC), mislabeled initially with MCI but in fact affected by anxiety, showed florid MW when writing with her left hand, which resolved as her anxiety receded. This case study supports anecdotal reports of MW triggered by anxiety, and the features of FC’s performance indicate a motor rather than a perceptual basis for the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mirror writing is a striking behaviour that is common in children and can reemerge in adults following brain damage. Skilleddeliberatemirror writing has also been reported, but only anecdotally. We provide the first quantitative study of skilled deliberate mirror writing. K.B. can write forward or backward, vertically upright or inverted, with the hands acting alone or simultaneously. K.B. is predominantly left handed, but writes habitually with his right hand. Of his writing formats, his left hand mirror writing is by far the most similar in style to his normal handwriting. When writing bimanually, he performs better when his two hands make mirror-symmetrical movements to write opposite scripts than if they move in the same direction to write similar scripts. He has no special facility for reading mirrored text.These features are consistent with prior anecdotal cases and support a motor basis for K.B.'s ability, according to which his skilled mirror writing results from the left hand execution of a low-level motor program for a right hand abductive writing action. Our methods offer a novel framework for investigating the sharing of motor representations across effectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article presents a simple theory according to which the left–right reversal of single digits by 5- and 6-year-old children is mainly due to the application of an implicit right-writing or -orienting rule. A number of nontrivial predictions can be drawn from this theory. First, left-oriented digits (1, 2, 3, 7, and 9) will be reversed more frequently than the other asymmetrical digits (4, 5, and 6). Second, for some pairs of digits, the correct writing of the preceding digit will statistically predict the reversal of the current digit and vice versa. Third, writing hand will have little effect on the frequency of reversals, and the relative frequencies with which children reverse the asymmetrical digits will be similar regardless of children’s preferred writing hand. Fourth, children who reverse the left-oriented digits the most are also those who reverse the other asymmetrical digits the least. An empirical study involving 367 5- and 6-year-olds confirmed these predictions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Mirror writing occurs in healthy children, in various pathologies and occasionally in healthy adults. There are only scant experimental data on the underlying brain processes. Eight, right-handed, healthy young adults were scanned (BOLD-fMRI) before and after practicing left-hand mirror-writing (lh-MW) over seven sessions. They wrote dictated words, using either the right hand with regularly oriented writing or lh-MW. An MRI compatible stylus-point recording system was used and online visual feedback was provided. Practice resulted in increased speed and readability of lh-MW but the number of movement segments was unchanged. Post-training signal increases occurred in visual, right lateral and medial premotor areas, and in right anterior and posterior peri-sylvian areas corresponding to language areas. These results suggest that lh-MW may constitute a latent ability that can be reinstated by a relatively brief practice experience. Concurrently, right hemisphere language processing areas may emerge, reflecting perhaps a reduction in trans-hemispheric suppression. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An experimental study was conducted with a young woman who had suddenly developed mirror writing in the right hand, which she used for writing. She was not cured for eight years. The patient was ambidextrous and had no medical complaints except for migraine with perceptual and sensory abnormalities, and an enlarged cavity of the septum pellucidum. A previous study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), conducted when she imagined letters and wrote letters in the air with either hand, indicated that both her cerebral hemispheres were active. In the present study three experiments were conducted using a tachistoscope to explore the stage in the cognitive process when directional errors emerged. In the experiments, after independently being presented with Attneave's meaningless figures or letters to each hemisphere, participants were requested to do the following: (a) verbally respond whether the orientation of two consecutively shown figures were the same or different and the letters were standard or reversed; (b) distinguish the orientations with right and left hand movements other than by writing (by pushing a button); and (c) reproduce the stimuli (drawing) immediately after the presentation. Results showed a higher rate of incorrect directions only when drawings were reproduced by the right hand. Results also indicated that the woman's inaccurate judgment in direction emerged only when in writing and not at the perceptual level, or when responding with hand movements other than writing. Her migraine was cured after five years following the experiment. The mirror writing was cured 2–3 months later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most studies of mirror writing have focused on specific populations (e.g., pathological cases) or conditions (e.g., right-handed individuals writing with their left hand); hence, many simple questions about mirror writing in typically developing 5-year-old children remain unanswered. The present study addresses 2 simple but important issues concerning the relation between (a) mirror copying single characters (digits and capital letters) and mirror writing the same characters from memory and (b) mirror writing single characters and mirror writing whole words (e.g., 1st name). To shed light on these issues, the authors carried out 3 experimental studies of children at écoles maternelles in France. The results offer new insights into the phenomenon of mirror writing. A copying task generated considerably fewer mirror writings than a writing-from-memory task, and there was a significant but weak correlation (rs = .22) between single-character mirror writing and name mirror writing. Academic level correlated positively with the mirror writing of characters (rs = .15); however, it correlated more positively with correct writing (rs = .32) and negatively with no (or other incorrect) writing (rs = -.45). This suggests that the mirror writings may occur (depending on the context) between some other incorrect writings (or absence of writing) and correct writings in the development of almost all children. In addition, contextual or situational factors, such as the preceding writing or the position of the writing on the page, had a much stronger influence on mirror writing than individual factors, such as writing hand or gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buchwald (1878) used the term ‘mirror writing’ to indicate writing in the reverse direction to what is normal in a particular language and in which the individual letters are also reversed. Cases of healthy individuals (i.e., Leonardo da Vinci and Lewis Carroll) as well as brain-damaged patients have been described in the literature. Here, we report the case of PM, a 70-year-old right-handed woman who showed right hemiplegia and mirror writing following a stroke in the left lenticular nucleus and internal capsulae. PM underwent a complete neuropsychological evaluation, which included copying, dictation and spontaneous writing in both hemispaces with both hands. She was also tested for topographical disorientation, visuo-spatial disorders and body schema deficits. We observed isolated mirror writing only when PM wrote with the left hand, without differences between hemispaces. She also showed a left-right disorientation, a body topological map disorder and an egocentric misrepresentation. The presence of mirror writing not confined to one hemispace and the co-presence of executive function disorders, as well as anosognosia, suggests damage to our patient's sub-cortical frontal network. As no previous interpretation fits with PM's symptoms, we hypothesize that mirror writing resulted from damage to her egocentric frame of reference. This hypothesis allows us to interpret the patient's array of disorders, including mirror writing, body topological map disorder, left-right confusion and egocentric representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Mirror writing (MW) is a rare disorder in which a script runs in direction opposite to normal and individual letters are reversed. The disorder generally occurs after left-hemisphere lesions, is transient and is observed on the left hand, whereas usually motor impairments prevent assessment of direction of right handwriting. We describe a left-handed patient with complete left hand mirror writing, still evident 2 years after a hemorrhagic stroke in left nucleo-capsular region. Since the patient could write with his right hand he underwent several writing tasks with either hand, and a thorough assessment to clarify the nature of MW. MW was evident in writing to dictation with left hand only, both in right and left hemispace, but the patient could modify his behavior when a verbal instruction was provided. No mirror errors were found in reading words, in copying geometric figures and in spatial orientation tasks. MW in our patient could be accounted for by a failure in automatic transformation of grapho-motor programs to write with the left hand. A lack of concern (a sort of anosodiaphoria) and a poor cognitive flexibility could contribute to long-term persistence of MW. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The combination of acquired mirror writing and reading is an extremely rare neurological disorder. It is encountered when brain damaged patients prefer horizontally mirrored over normal script in writing and reading. Previous theories have related this pathology to a disinhibition of mirrored engrams in the non-dominant hemisphere, possibly accompanied by a reversal of the preferred scanning direction. Here, we report the experimental investigation of PR, a patient who developed pronounced mirror writing and reading following septic shock that caused hypoxic brain damage. A series of five oculomotor experiments revealed that the patient''s preferred scanning direction was indeed reversed. However, PR showed striking scanpath abnormalities and mirror reversals that cannot be explained by previous theories. Considered together with mirror phenomena she displayed in neuropsychological tasks and everyday activities, our findings suggest a horizontal reversal of visual information on a perceptual level. In addition, a systematic manipulation of visual variables within two further experiments had dramatic effects on her mirror phenomena. When confronted with moving, flickering or briefly presented stimuli, PR showed hardly any left-right reversals. Not only do these findings underline the perceptual nature of her disorder, but also allow interpretation of the pathology in terms of a dissociation between visual subsystems. We speculate that early visual cortices are crucially involved in this dissociation. More generally, her mirrored vision may represent an extreme clinical manifestation of the relative instability of the horizontal axis in spatial vision. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Mirror writing (MW) refers to the production of individual letters or whole word strings in reversed direction. When held to a mirror, these letters or words can be read normally. We observed MW in a considerable number of stroke patients. Of the 86 patients screened 15 (17.5%) showed at least one instance of mirror writing in any of the tasks. Both right (14% of 36 patients) and left (20% of 50 patients) hemisphere damaged patients produced reversed letters only when writing with their left hand, respectively the contralesional and ipsilesional hand. The dissociated performance between the two hands in brain damaged patients is relevant to the interpretation of MW because, unlike all other peripheral dysgraphias, MW affects the non-dominant hand only. Importantly, healthy elderly also showed MW solely when writing with their left hand (6.9% of 86 participants). MW in controls was less frequent but qualitatively similar to that observed in brain damaged patients. This finding is consistent with the motor interpretation of MW that assumes an inability to transform the stored letter forming programmes for left hand writing. However, several cases have been reported in the literature of a more pervasive form of MW whereby patients mirror reverse entire words or sentences. This pattern has been observed in children learning to write but it has never been observed in healthy adult volunteers. We propose that the diagnosis of MW should be limited to the reversal of whole words, multi-digit numbers and full sentences, which reveal a disorder in coding the correct direction of writing rather than an inability to accomplish the correct spatial orientation of single letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a young woman who suddenly began mirror writing with her right hand and has not reverted to normal writing for more than 6 years, although she writes normally with her left hand. She is ambidextrous, although she had previously used only her right hand for writing and drawing. Since it is much easier for her to use right-handed mirror writing, she uses her left hand only for writing meant to be read by others and her right hand for all other writing. Her hobbies are sculpture and painting, and her chief complaint is migraine accompanied by sensory and perceptive disturbances. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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Recent research into character reversals in writings produced by occidental children has shown that they mainly reverse the left-oriented digits (1, 2, 3, 7, and 9) and therefore appear to apply a right-orienting rule. But do they produce similar reversal errors when asked to recognize the digits? In an experiment, based on eye-tracking observations of 50 children (Mage = 5.4 years), children had to point towards a target digit in a 2 × 2 matrix also containing three distractor digits, one of which was the mirror-reversed writing of the correctly written target digit. This recognition task led to a true "battle" in children's memory between the two writings of the target digit. This battle is shown in the graphical abstract that represents a heat map from a sub-sample of children (on the left side) and the fixation points map from an individual child (on the right side). Rather than following the predicted right-orienting rule, the children's responses appeared to be biased towards digits in the right-hand column of the 2 × 2 matrices (when the reversed target digit was not in the same column as the correctly written target digit). As a whole, these findings support the hypotheses that many 4- to 6-year-old's representations of the digit writings are unoriented in their memory and that these children may adopt different solutions to overcome this lack of orientation depending on whether they write or read. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mirror writing, its occurrence in famous people, mechanisms, and pathophysiology, are discussed by a neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, UK.

Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ꓱ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character's orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters' shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis that an atypical hemispheric specialization is associated to developmental dyslexia (DD) is receiving renewed interest, lending some support to Orton’s theory. In this article, we investigated whether interhemispheric transfer processes (IHT) are likely to be involved in developmental dyslexia. In this study, we tested 13 children with developmental dyslexia and 13 matched controls (aged 8 to 13 years) in four different tasks. In a tactile transfer task, the dyslexic children’s performance was less accurate. In a standard Poffenberger paradigm, dyslexic children performed slower than the controls in all conditions and did not show any difference between crossed and uncrossed conditions. Furthermore, they showed an increased asymmetry of performance according to the responding hand, while controls gave more coherent responses. In a visual task of object orientation discrimination, dyslexic children had slower Response Times (RTs) than controls, especially for mirror-reversed objects in the right visual field. Finally, a higher number of dyslexic children showed mirror-drawing or mirror-writing with respect to controls. Our results as a whole show that children with DD are impaired in interhemispheric transfer, although the differences in performance among dyslexic individuals suggest the impairment of different psychophysiological mechanisms. As such, a common origin in terms of connectivity problems is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]